The sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower and has become a potent symbol of hope and resistance during the invasion. It’s a concept Egle Plytnikaite, a Lithuanian illustrator based in Vilnius, has captured poignantly in her cover art for this week’s edition of the Guardian’s weekly news magazine.
“My goal was to depict the unbreakable spirit of Ukrainian people who united for their country in the darkest hour,” she writes. “They are experiencing an absolutely horrible and inhumane terror from Russian occupiers and yet they manage to keep morale high and fight back with incredible force. There is a saying that ‘you cannot make a free man kneel’ and Ukrainians are a living example of that.
