\n<\/p>\n
It looks like a serene snapshot from Ukraine\u2019s battlefield: A group of armor-clad soldiers huddled around a makeshift table scattered with food and playing cards. Some laugh or smoke, and one lounges on the ground, smiling as he scrolls through his phone.<\/p>\n
The photograph is unlike others of the Ukrainian front that have rallied people in Ukraine over the course of the war \u2014 there is no cannon fire, no soldiers climbing out of trenches, no wounded fighters with faces contorted in pain.<\/p>\n
Still, for the past year, the image has been widely shared online by Ukrainians and praised by government officials, who displayed it recently in the capital\u2019s leading exhibition center because it has struck at the heart of the Ukrainian identity struggle caused by Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n
The photograph \u2014 staged and taken in late 2023 by \u00c9meric Lhuisset, a French photographer \u2014 reimagines a famous 19th-century painting of Cossacks based in central Ukraine<\/a>, with present-day Ukrainian soldiers standing in for the legendary horse-riding warriors. The soldiers\u2019 poses and expressions are the same, though swords have been replaced by machine guns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The subject matter is at the heart of a culture war between Russia and Ukraine that has intensified since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion almost three years ago, with Ukrainians seeking to reclaim and assert an identity that Russia says does not exist.<\/p>\n The painting has been claimed by both Ukraine and Russia as part of their heritages. It not only depicts Cossacks, a people that both countries view as their own, but it was also made by Illia Repin, an artist born in what is today Ukraine but who did much of his work in Moscow and St. Petersburg, then the capital of the Russian Empire.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It is a cultural battle long dominated by Russia. The most famous version of the painting is displayed in St. Petersburg, while another lesser-known version is in Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine. Repin has been labeled Russian in international exhibitions<\/a>, frustrating Ukrainians who see him as one of their own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has pushed institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art to reconsider this classification and relabel Repin as Ukrainian.<\/p>\n With his photographic reinterpretation, Mr. Lhuisset seeks to further challenge Russia\u2019s narrative by drawing a direct line between the Cossacks, who at times resisted the rule of czarist Russia, and the current Ukrainian Army.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t understand this war if you don\u2019t understand the whole issue of cultural appropriation,\u201d Mr. Lhuisset, 41, said in a recent interview in Ukraine\u2019s capital, Kyiv. \u201cThis is a real cultural war.\u201d<\/p>\n The painting \u2014 \u201cReply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey<\/a>\u201d \u2014 is familiar to most Ukrainians, with reproductions adorning many family homes. It shows a group of Cossacks from an area straddling today\u2019s Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine laughing heartily as they write a mocking reply to an ultimatum to surrender from the sultan in 1676.<\/p>\n The Zaporizhzhia region is now partly under Russian occupation. The rest has come under increasing Russian airstrikes in recent months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Although historians say the depicted scene most likely never took place, the sense of defiance it conveys has resonated deeply in Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cThis painting was an element of self-identity formation for me,\u201d said Tetyana Osipova, 49, a Ukrainian servicewoman featured in the photograph. She recalled that her grandmother had kept a small reproduction \u201cin a place of honor\u201d near the Christian Orthodox icons in their home, where it served as a reminder to \u201cstand up for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Lhuisset said he first grasped the painting\u2019s significance when he was in Kyiv during the 2014 uprising that ousted a pro-Kremlin president. He remembered seeing protesters holding placards with reproductions of the artwork to symbolize \u201ctheir willingness not to surrender, not to submit.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in France, the painting slipped from his mind.<\/p>\n Until Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.<\/p>\n Mr. Lhuisset was inspired by a news report about a Ukrainian border guard\u2019s defiant and expletive-laden radio message<\/a> to an oncoming Russian naval assault. The insulting reply immediately reminded him of the painting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cFor me, it was the Cossacks\u2019 answer to the sultan,\u201d he said. \u201cIt seemed blindingly obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n He decided to capture this spirit of defiance by recreating Repin\u2019s painting in a modern setting. He spent months negotiating with the Ukrainian military to get armed troops to pose for the photograph and to find a safe place, north of Kyiv, to stage it. Some soldiers came straight from the front line, their mustachioed faces evoking the unruly Cossacks.<\/p>\n \u201cThey looked like they had stepped out of the painting!\u201d said Andrii Malyk, the press officer for Ukraine\u2019s 112th Territorial Defense Brigade, which participated in the project.<\/p>\n Mr. Lhuisset wanted the photograph to be as close to the painting as possible. He meticulously arranged the 30 or so soldiers, positioning their hands and asking them to freeze in bursts of hearty laughter to echo the energy of the original scene. Objects in the painting were replaced with modern equivalents: a slouch hat became a helmet; a musket transformed into a rocket launcher; a mandolin was swapped for a portable speaker.<\/p>\n A drone hovers in the sky, a nod to the aircraft with no crew that have become conspicuous on the battlefield.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Lhuisset released the photograph a few days later on social media<\/a>, and it was quickly embraced by Ukrainian media and government officials as an emblem of the country\u2019s spirit of independence. Ukraine\u2019s Defense Ministry posted the image on the social media platform X<\/a> with the caption: \u201cCossack blood flows in our veins.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To Ukrainians, the photograph served as a means to reclaim a masterpiece that they say has long been misattributed to Russia, despite its Ukrainian roots.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people think of the painting as Russian, not Ukrainian,\u201d said Eduard Lopuliak, a combat medic featured in the photograph. \u201cIt\u2019s a way to remind them it\u2019s our cultural heritage, not Russia\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n