Ukrainian military advertisements and propaganda have shifted, from last year’s apocalyptic battles with Russian monsters, to protecting and fostering a future for the country.
At the beginning of 2024, recruitment posters and wartime propaganda in at least several cities heavily featured Ukrainian soldiers staring down zombies and orcs in Russian military uniforms. Russian forces are still referred to as orcs by Ukrainian soldiers, JRR Tolkien’s evil humanoid creatures that invaded the rest of Middle Earth from Mordor.
While these posters casting Russian forces as a villainous race of monsters still exist in many areas, the narrative has diminished to make way for a more positive public relations campaign. Billboards now focus on the family, with Ukrainian soldiers carrying babies on their shoulders or raising them above their heads, embracing their mothers and elders.
“We are here to live,” read the posters, part of a campaign by the same name launched by the Ukrainian Third Army Corps in August.
Ukraine enters its fourth year of invasion by Russian forces
The campaign for the newly formed corps came just before the country entered its fourth year of invasion by Russian forces, and the long and bloody war itself has moved from a critical emergency to a war of attrition with largely static battle lines. The Jerusalem Post spoke to a few Ukrainians in December who believed the war would soon end, despite diplomatic pushes by US President Donald Trump.
Instead, they foresaw Kyiv grappling with Moscow as a long-term norm. One military officer said the orc posters were still present and that there was no change in how the invaders were perceived, but that Ukrainians needed to see that they could endure and live with the new reality.
As much as the posters remind one of life, the reality of death is never forgotten. One type of public relations poster that still hasn’t changed over the years is that bearing the faces and names of those who fell in battle. Each town and city appeared to host different sets of billboards and signs recalling the men who had made the ultimate sacrifices for their country.
“They don’t die,” read one poster.