Putler, Putinna and Death: Russia's War Against the Ukraine in Political Cartoons and Posters

Abstract

The genre of political caricature has been busy with Putin’s war in Ukraine. The cartoon represents a form of coping with violence and the threat of violence. Every caricature is also a political statement. With regard to Ukraine, Polish cartoonists tie into Poland’s collective memory of war and occupation. In their drawings, they merge Putin and Hitler, or they fall back on living folk traditions, such as the expulsion of winter by burning the straw doll Marzanna; in tempore belli, so during times of war, she mutates into Putinna. Yet the Russian president has been shown from multiple perspectives in the cartoons of European artists. This paper focuses on the one-picture caricature and its connections to real events as well as to their translation into image and text. In the context of what the caricature conveys, and as whom it depicts Putin and Zelensky, the author is interested in the levels at which caricatures and political posters operate, what other cultural content they refer to, and finally what political, sociological, psychological, and artistic functions they fulfil. For this paper, the author explores the iconography and iconotext of the Russian war in Ukraine in political cartoons and posters published from the outbreak of the war until mid-April 2022.