A Ukrainian illustrator and cartoonist refused to come to Osnabrück, Germany, for the official awards ceremony of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize on June 22 to avoid joint participation in the event with a Russian writer.
Ukrainian Sergiy Maidukov was awarded this year’s special prize, while the main prize goes to Russian Lyudmila Ulitskaya, who has been living in exile in Berlin since March 2022, according to the Osnabrück website.
“Taking care of my psychics, I avoid hard feelings these times, I have enough of a Russian presence in my life so far, so I would come just another day than the Ceremony. I would be honored to come and to meet you and the team live and say thank you live,” Maidukov said.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2002, his illustrations depicting everyday life during the war in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine have been printed in various newspapers worldwide, including ZEITmagazin, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. As a volunteer, he visited Irpin, Bucha and other cities shortly after their liberation and recorded what he experienced and saw in his drawings.
Sergiy Maidukov was born in Donetsk – one of eastern Ukraine’s major cities occupied by the Russian aggressors in 2014. He has been living in Kyiv since 2006.
In 2022, Maidukov was a co-winner at the Joseph Binder international graphic design and Illustration competition for his artbook “KYIV.”
“Today, I woke up and my first thoughts were about the inevitability of war. With reports of Russian saboteurs and hackers infiltrating Ukraine, anxiety is running high among my family and friends. Some of us have decided to join the Territorial Defense Forces—this helps calm me down, but not much. We pass soldiers on the street and in the metro. Around the city, the government is checking bomb shelters as a worker repaints a “Shelter” sign. In vain, I try to hide from the news,” he wrote on Feb. 24, 2002, for The New Yorker, which published a series of his cartoons, “Postcard from Kyiv”:
The Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize is awarded every two years and honors people who build bridges and make peace possible through their thoughts and actions.
Photo: Alina Pankova via The Ukrainians
