Set against the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag, the vast image of a masked fighter holding a grey-and-white cat towers over a street on the side of an apartment block in Kyiv.
The painting depicts volunteer Oleksiy Movchan, a 49-year-old who was killed by Russian shelling in May 2022 in the eastern Donetsk region shortly after he and three of his fellow soldiers rescued 11 civilians and the cat.
The image, reproduced from a photo taken moments before Movchan died, is one of two-dozen war-themed murals capturing fallen soldiers, legendary figures and key moments in the gruelling conflict that have appeared on the city’s walls since Russia’s full-scale invasion began two years ago.
In one mural, a fighter pilot making a thumbs-up sign fills a wall in a Kyiv neighbourhood. It’s a reference to a famous photo that circulated in the early months of the war, purportedly showing the “Ghost of Kyiv” — a mythical pilot who was celebrated for shooting down multiple Russian planes over the capital in the first hours of the invasion but who Ukraine’s air force later admitted never actually existed.
The phenomenon of vivid street paintings brightening the drab grey walls of apartment buildings is not new in Ukraine. Before the war, those images depicted fairy tales, outstanding musicians and national figures. Now they honour volunteer soldiers and others who have become well-known symbols of heroism and resistance over the past two years.
