Mural of Ukrainian and Russian Soldiers Sparks Fury: 'Highly Offensive'

A mural on display in the Australian city of Melbourne has been condemned as an attempt to distort the reality of Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The painting on the side of a building in Kings Way in the state of Victoria's capital city shows a Russian soldier and a Ukrainian serviceman hugging each other.

The image was shared on the Instagram account of the artist Peter Seaton, in which a short video clip shows a bang and a mushroom cloud forming. Next to the clip, is the message, "Love to people of Ukraine. I hope we can find peace and end this needless bloodshed."

But the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations [AFUO] said the image drew a false moral equivalence between the aggressor and the victim, promoted Russian disinformation and enforced on Ukraine an obligation to accept attempts to destroy it.

Stefan Romaniw, who is AFUO co-chair, said that the implication that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers only needed to make peace with each other to avert nuclear war, was "highly offensive."

"The fact is, those are the same soldiers who are murdering Ukrainians," he told Newsweek.

"What he's trying to say is, 'let's get together and, and make up'. Well, that's not going to happen while the Russians are being the aggressors," he said.

Romaniw said the AFUO had approached Seaton previously to do some Ukrainian murals which he had declined.

After becoming aware of the work on Friday, he said the AFUO has written to Seaton and told him "we are disgusted with what he has done."

Romaniw expects there to be a strong reaction from the local Ukrainian community who would lobby the city authorities in Melbourne for the mural to be removed.

Newsweek has contacted the Melbourne city council and Seaton for comment.

Kyiv's ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, tweeted that the mural was "utterly offensive to all Ukrainians" and that the painter "has no clue" about the Russian invasion of Ukraine" and said that "it must be promptly removed."

Business Ukraine magazine tweeted: "This remarkably tone-deaf mural in Melbourne whitewashes Russian genocide in Ukraine."

Chinese-Australian artist Badiucao tweeted to his 107,000 followers, "Why not just paint Hitler hugging holocaust victims?"

Meanwhile, in a Twitter thread, Olga Boichak, a sociologist at the University of Sydney who tweets about wartime Ukraine, said that the image showed "false equivalency" which was "dangerous."

"It implies that peace can be achieved if both parties agreed to lay down their weapons," she wrote. "By now, we all have a clear idea of what would happen if Ukraine stopped fighting, so this "art" delegitimizes the lived experiences of resistance."

"Unsurprisingly, similar tropes can be seen on murals in Russia—forcing a victim and aggressor into the picture on equal terms," she added.