Every day the news is full of Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. We just can’t seem to get enough Ukraine.
We have a great CagleCartoonist from Ukraine, Vladimir Kazanevsky, who has probably won more international cartooning competitions than any other cartoonist in the world –but the international competition world is a different world, with different aesthetics that seem strange and foreign to an American reader.
I noticed that Vlad hadn’t posted any cartoons about the Ukraine/impeachment scandal and I told him that he is the only cartoonist from Ukraine that American readers are likely to see. Vlad’s perch in Kyiv could make his cartoons interesting to Western editors. Vlad then uploaded these three.
It looks like this jester-trap will draw Trump in as he is lured into watching himself on TV.
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Here Ukraine is a clown-seal that is getting Trump’s attention …
Here the jester appears to be Ukraine’s brain that is commanding heavy-Trump-the-elephant’s attention.
Vlad’s cartoons are charming, although I must admit that I don’t really understand most of them. This is typical of the international contest cartoonists who have a different cartoon language that doesn’t make much sense to Americans like me. Charming, though.
Here are selections of some of Vlad’s cartoons that I can understand – the first one shows refugees fleeing from a repressive regime.
This one shows our climate-change future.
Here man struggles with oil.
Putin doesn’t seem happy as his cold, Russian Trump-Vodka seems to have turned into poop, which doesn’t go well with caviar.
This charming cartoon shows animals who seem to be demonstrating in favor of their own predators.
All of this is only to show that Vlad is great, but I’m not surprised that we don’t see cartoons from Ukraine in American newspapers even while Ukraine dominates the news.
The photo below shows me with Vlad in Vlad’s studio in Kyiv a few years ago. Behind us are some of Vlad’s trophies from over 500 international cartooning prizes he has won in 52 countries. See Vlad’s archive on Cagle.com.
… And here’s an endangered tree, praying while stuck in place.
