Ukraine's Ammo-Box Icons

Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Klymenko shows one of his ammunition-box icons and part of a discarded ammo box he uses for his artwork at his Kyiv studio.

Instead of using regular wooden panels, Klymenko and his wife, Sofia Atlantova (right), paint Christian icons on the lids and bottoms of the ammo boxes.

The wooden panels are brought from Ukraine’s Donbas region, where an ongoing conflict with Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.

Ukrainian fighters unload belts of bullets from a crate in 2015. Wooden ammunition boxes also are used throughout eastern Ukraine to transport rockets, grenades, and artillery shells.

Klymenko got the idea for ammo-box icons during a 2014 visit to a military base when he noticed that the crates resemble wooden panels used for ancient religious art.

Klymenko's first ammo-box icon depicted the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus.

Klymenko says the icon appeared to be “at least 800 years old” when painted on war-scuffed wood.

Archangel Barachiel painted on an ammunition-box fragment given to the artist couple by Ukrainian marines stationed in Mariupol, Ukraine.

Since 2015, Klymenko and Atlantova have raised more than $300,000 by selling their artwork to help fund a volunteer field hospital in the Donbas region.

St. George slays a dragon on an ammunition-box panel from the front lines at Avdiyivka, Ukraine.

Klymenko says: “Most people think of this war as of something very far away. It was important for me to show people that the war is real, that this ammunition box is real, and it stored real weapons that killed real people.”

He told Reuters: “I don’t want this war to exist. And I don’t want this project to exist either.”