The Ukrainian artilleryman was all set to slide the explosive shell into a launcher and send it on its way toward Russian positions — but first he had to take care of one last thing on his checklist.
“For Uman,” he scrawled on the side of the projectile with a felt-tip marker.
Then he ducked away as it roared off on a fiery trajectory to the front line.
Uman is the Ukrainian city where more than two dozen civilians were killed last month in a Russian rocket attack. But it is hardly the only city Russia has attacked, and the message on the shell was also only one of many.
After more than a year of war, Ukrainians have a lot to say to Russia, and many have chosen to say it on the sides of rockets, mortar shells and even exploding drones. Thousands of messages have been sent, ranging from the sardonic to the bitter, among them one from Valentyna Vikhorieva, whose 33-year-old son died in the war.
“For Yura, from Mom,” Ms. Vikhorieva asked an artillery unit to write on a shell….
This article was written by Maria Varenikova and originally published on www.nytimes.com