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 by Ukrainian soldiers as orcs, 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 remain, in many areas the narrative has diminished to make way for a more positive public relations campaign.
Billboards have focused 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,” reads 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 US President Donald Trump's diplomatic efforts. Instead they foresaw Kyiv grappling with Moscow as a long term norm.
One military officer said the orc posters were still present, that there was no change in how the invaders were perceived, but that Ukrainians needed to see that they would endure and live with the new reality.
As much as the posters reminded us of life, the reality of death was never forgotten. One type of public relations poster that had still not changed over the year was those 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.