Sunday, March 06, 2022

Ukraine crisis on the walls of London

Like most people watching terrible events continuing to unfold in Ukraine, I feel a sense of powerlessness. I have no armchair hot takes or new geopolitical analyses, other than to express solidarity with people in Ukraine subject to brutal invasion and with those opposing the war in Russia itself (as well as sympathy for those Russian conscripts sent to fight in Putin's war, who we can only hope will turn against their masters as they have at other key points in Russian history)

There are a few echoes of the war on the walls of London, including in the graffiti tunnel in Leake Street under Waterloo station.

'Ukraine burns as we watch. F*ck Putin Murderer'




'F*ck Putin! Make love not war'.

'love not war' - simplistic but true. Since almost everyone prefers the former to the latter why can't it be so?

[There was also lots of memorial graffiti there this week for drum & bass MC Skibadee, who was born in Waterloo]

A couple more from elsewhere...

Noticed a few window signs going up including this 'Glory to Ukraine' near Brockley cross.

A friend sent this one from Greenwich High Road. A contemporary twist on the old anarchist slogan 'No war but intersectional class war'

Waterloo newspaper?

The graffiti in the Waterloo tunnels serve as a kind of wall newspaper, constantly changing in response to current cultural and social events. I took some photos there last year (June 2021) and at the time there was more about Covid, as well as the police off the back of the Black Lives Matters and 'Kill the Bill' demonstrations:



'class matters when it affects you'