Ukraine: Drawing Trauma and Hope by Ella Baron
“Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I’ve drawn many political cartoons about the war. It looked very different from the ground, where war is fought and lived by ordinary people, just like us. In the hospitals I visited in May this year, I sketched the precise way in which war is mapped on individual bodies and listened to the stories behind their scars. I drew what people told me, as well as what I saw, because trauma and hope are intangible things of memory and imagination. There’s nothing left to draw of an amputated limb but memories – the same could be said for a lost home or relative. These things are beyond a camera’s reach, which I think gives you licence to reach for a pencil.”
Those words are by Ella Baron. A UK-based political cartoonist and illustrator, she is renowned for her social commentary and graphic reportage. Over the years, she has documented several MSF projects. This year, she visited our projects in Vinnytsia and Cherkasy in Ukraine. Almost three years since the war in Ukraine escalated, the toll on the population remains high. In MSF facilities, the testimonies collected tell stories of both suffering and resilience. Ella Baron has captured this through her art, creating a visual record that goes beyond conventional photography. These are her drawings and her words about her work in Ukraine.
MSF activities in Ukraine
Since February 2022, the full-scale war in Ukraine, has triggered a dramatic increase in the number of people in Ukraine with long-term injuries requiring complex care. This includes individuals with blast injuries, shrapnel wounds, and amputations, all of whom require intensive, specialised care, placing extra strain on the country’s health system. In response, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) launched an early rehabilitation project at Cherkasy Hospital in central Ukraine in March 2023. This project provides physiotherapy, psychological support and nursing care to address the complex needs of patients wounded in the war early in their recovery process.
Mental health is also central to the care that MSF provides in Ukraine. In 2023, MSF began offering specialised psychotherapeutic services to people showing symptoms of war-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Vinnytsia. A custom-designed mental health centre opened in September 2024. In this centre, MSF offers one-to-one psychological sessions, also sessions for members of patients’ support networks, and provide patients with techniques to help reduce symptoms, increase coping skills and decrease the consequences of traumatic stress.
In addition, our Vinnytsia team also provides evidence-based treatments for war veterans who have been wounded or demobilized and are readjusting to civilian life, as well as for their relatives and families, and for displaced people affected by the war. The centre uses therapies such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to help patients process traumatic memories and alleviate PTSD symptoms.
For this project, we welcomed Ella Baron to our facilities in Vinnitsya and Cherkasy in May 2025. This was published in The Guardian in July and exhibited at The Arcade at Bush House, King’s College London, in September. Ella Baron previously collaborated with MSF in late 2018 in the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. She collected testimonies from patients, mostly Syrian women, and based on their stories, she produced: To see one smile – illustrations of mental health amongst Shatila refugees. In 2019, MSF commissioned Ella Baron to travel to the remote region of Pibor in South Sudan to document maternal health challenges. Her graphic short story was entitled South Sudan: The Long Walk for New Life.