No matter what the reason proffered, the widely circulated images of Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from a fashion shoot are disturbing. Russia invaded Ukraine in February this year. Right now, the United Nations says, Russia is preventing humanitarian aid from being brought into occupied regions of Ukraine; the Red Cross is seeking access to a prison camp in Olenivka, where 50-plus Ukrainian prisoners of war have been killed and many wounded. Only last week, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and former president Dmitry Medvedev shared two maps in a Telegram post. The first, he said, is the map of Ukraine “in the mind of the president… damaged by psychotropic substances”. About the second, which shows Kyiv and a small surrounding area, Medvedev writes: Western analysts believe it (the actual future map of Ukraine) will look like this.” At such a time, comes this shoot.

Hold the pose

Timing is one of the reasons for discomfiture. A section of defenders might also argue that this is their chosen grammar of protest, of raising awareness and empathy. But isn’t the grammar a dead giveaway of the great disconnect between the people and their first caretakers? In her Instagram post, Zelenska, while conceding that the opportunity is “a great honour and dream of many”, says something about wanting to see “every Ukrainian woman here, in my place”. Really? The question that springs to mind is — would those be the 50,000 women in the Ukrainian armed forces? Or the 5,000 in the frontlines? Would those dreamers include them being trafficked and those fleeing the country? Not to be melodramatic, but would it include the mother who scribbled her family’s contact details on her young child’s back; you know, in case the toddler was orphaned.

Is that you?

Ukrainian artist Serge Zakharov has suggested an alternate cover photo. It shows 21-year-old Kateryna from Ternopil. The music student trained to be a paramedic last year and thereafter went to the war zone in Donbas to help the Ukrainian military. Some of you might remember her from a video circulated not too long ago --- a young woman in battle fatigue singing a battle song in a Mariupol bomb shelter. None of this is to say Zelenska is insulated from the war, didn’t do her bit. Being a prime target of Russia, living out of an undisclosed location, meeting the Jill Bidens and Kamala Harrises to raise awareness for Ukraine is her reality. But it is not representative of a larger, far grimmer condition. Zelenska writes in her post: “Each of you, fellow Ukrainian women, is now the face and cover of our country.”