David Chichkan (1986–2025) was a Ukrainian anarchist artist and a key figure in the contemporary antifascist and punk movements. He was known for his graphic work and graffiti with a strong political message.
With the start of the full-scale war, David supported the anti-authoritarian resistance against Russian aggression. For him, as for many Ukrainian leftists, fighting the Russian army was a direct continuation of the struggle against neo-fascism, imperialism, and chauvinism.
He turned down offers from European institutions willing to pay thousands of euros for a safe life and work abroad. He tried to volunteer for the front but was rejected due to health reasons. Instead, he created a series of paintings and posters depicting fighters from leftist and anti-authoritarian units, adorned with ribbons representing Ukraine, a free Belarus, feminism, and anarchism. All proceeds from his work were donated to support the army. His exhibitions were held in multiple European cities.
In 2024, David finally joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a volunteer. He died on August 9, 2025, on the Zaporizhzhia front, on the same land where Nestor Makhno, who inspired him, once fought. He was 39 years old, leaving behind a wife and young child.
David dreamed of a “social Ukraine of the future, full of freedom and equality,” the defeat of Russian imperialism, and the liberation of peoples colonized by the Kremlin. He sought to show European and global leftists that Ukrainian leftists stand for Ukraine, challenging Kremlin propaganda that frames the war as a “conflict between rights.”
“Black Square” collaborated with David on exhibitions, stickers, and posters. In correspondence, he stressed the importance of materials in Greek, French, Spanish, Catalan, and Italian, where leftists are especially vulnerable to Kremlin propaganda.
Unfortunately, David did not have time to prepare answers for our interview. This text is compiled from his speeches, interviews, friends’ memories, and open sources.
David Chichkan (1986–2024) — a Ukrainian anarchist artist and a key figure in the country’s contemporary anti-fascist and punk movements. From a young age,
he participated in street anti-fascist actions in Kyiv, collaborated with anarchist collectives, and was part of the S.H.A.R.P. subculture (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice). He was known for his political paintings and graffiti,
as well as for taking part in battles, demonstrations, and direct actions during pivotal moments in the country’s recent history. For him, art and activism were two sides of the same struggle..
David saw Russia’s invasion as a manifestation of modern fascism—an issue that remains difficult for many in the West and even in Russia to understand. For him, as for many Ukrainian leftists, resisting the Russian army was a continuation of the struggle against neo-fascism, imperialism, and chauvinism. Due to health issues, he could not go to the front immediately, but he continued the fight, turning his art into a tool of support: creating paintings and posters featuring fighters from leftist units under the flags of Ukraine, Free Belarus, feminism, and anarchism, and donating all proceeds to support the army.
In addition to his political activity, Chichkan was a visual artist. His works were exhibited not only in galleries and museums across Ukraine but also in Europe. His art combined elements of graphic expression, historical symbolism, social critique, the legacy of anarchism, and reflections on state violence. After Russia’s invasion in 2022, his works were shown in Brussels, Valencia, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Berlin, Marseille, and other cities.
He was born in Kyiv into a family of artists. His great-grandfather, Leonid Chichkan, was a socialist painter whose works, kept in the Kherson Art Museum until 2022, were looted by the Russian occupation forces.
David created large-scale street graffiti and murals. After 2022, these included a mural of Nestor Makhno in Zaporizhzhia and a work dedicated to the Roma community in Uzhhorod fighting for Ukraine. He openly framed his art as agitation for an independent, ecological, socialist, and classless Ukraine. His works often provoked the rage of the far right, but he refused to compromise and carried on.
In 2017, in a commentary on one of his exhibitions, he said that leftists at the front were defending Ukraine and its workers from the advance of Russia’s authoritarian regime. According to him, Ukrainian leftists had opposed the Kremlin long before the Maidan Revolution. David Chichkan was an active participant in the Maidan protests. He held anarchist views and believed that, as a result of the revolution, Ukraine had not achieved its intended goals.
For more than 20 years, David Chichkan took part in political and social protests, was active in anarchist organizations, and supported trade unions. He participated in the Maidan Revolution, criticized the parliamentary opposition and the incomplete outcomes of the revolution. As a well-known artist, Chichkan used international platforms to counter propaganda about a “coup” and a “Nazi junta,” emphasizing that leftist forces, too, were fighting for Ukraine’s independence. For the Maidan, he created the poster “Revolution Against Counter-Revolution”, opposing the 1921 Kronstadt anarchist uprising to the Bolsheviks, who killed those revolutionaries.
In 2024, David was able to volunteer for the army, joining an infantry company alongside like-minded anti-authoritarians. He turned down offers from European art institutions willing to pay him to live
and work safely abroad. “If someone wants to support me—let them support me here… Making money off the war by creating art somewhere outside Ukraine is very low,” he told his friend and fellow soldier Nikita Kozachinsky.
David was mobilized without making public statements, avoided posting photos in uniform, and continued commenting on cultural and political events on social media. For his fellow soldiers, he became a guide to the world of Ukrainian history, literature, art, and global leftist thought. Chichkan considered promoting radical left ideas among his comrades “one of his most important missions within the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
David dreamed of a “social Ukraine of the future, full of freedom and equality”— of defeating Russian imperialism and liberating the peoples colonized by the Kremlin. He wanted to show European and global leftists that Ukrainian leftists stand for Ukraine, thereby countering Kremlin propaganda that portrayed the war as a “fight of the right against the right.” In his series “With Ribbons and Flags”, he depicted Ukrainian soldiers through the lens of feminism, anti-fascism, anarchism, social equality, and anti-authoritarianism, emphasizing that these ideals are central to a democratic Ukraine.
On August 8, 2025, during a mission to repel a Russian infantry attack, David was fatally wounded. He died on the land where Nestor Makhno was born and fought, whose legacy had inspired him. He was 39 years old. He left behind his wife and young child.
On his uniform was an anarchist patch with the words: “For your freedom and ours.” These words, like his entire life, combined the struggle with weapons in hand and the struggle through art—for an independent, free, ecological, socialist, and classless Ukraine.
I had the opportunity to leave Ukraine all these past two years, as many other artists did, but I love Ukraine and see certain advantages to living here even during the war. Ukraine is a modern nation-building project, and this project is leftist and anti-authoritarian by design. Ukrainian banknotes feature socialists, not an imperial double-headed eagle; in our schools we have the same portraits, and cities are named after the people depicted on them.
“I believe it is possible to prevent the victory of neoliberals and neoconservatives and to return today’s Ukraine to what it was originally intended to be. We, leftist anti-authoritarians, do everything we can to stop Ukrainians from equating socialism with the grim experience of the Soviet project, which was not truly socialist, but a product of counter-revolution and the authoritarian Bolsheviks’ reaction—who, in doing so, realized Bakunin’s predictions and warnings.”
«My projects aim to show Ukrainians that the left is not their enemy, and to convey to Europeans and the global public that anarchists, anti-authoritarian/democratic socialists, Roma, LGBTQ people, and feminists—not only the radical right—are voluntarily fighting for Ukraine. This should help improve understanding of the war. One of my long-standing goals was also to show that neo-Nazis and neo-fascists fight for the Kremlin; this is no longer relevant, as everyone has already realized it. But I consider the most important task to be preserving the legacy of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and Huliaipole Anarchist Republic (Makhno, 1917–1921).»
What do you hope to achieve in 2024?
“I dream that the imperialists will be defeated this year, although that’s very naive. This year I’m joining the army, and I hope to stay alive.
I also hope that more Ukrainians will learn about the Kurdistan project, the Kurdish autonomies, and the Kurds. I hope no new wars break out on the planet. I hope that conservative and authoritarian forces do not gain the upper hand in various countries, because right now is exactly the time when they could grow—that’s my opinion.”
“Russian anarchists are divided between those who oppose the war and those who directly support Ukraine. The Belarusian anarchist and anti-fascist movement supports Ukraine, and a significant part of it fights within the ranks of Ukrainian self-defense forces.”
“Polish and Czech anarchists from the federation also support us, but we did not feel any support from the anarcho-syndicalists, specifically support for Ukrainians fighting the occupiers. Instead, we hear from them about their hostility to NATO and that Ukraine is a NATO puppet. I was disappointed by the French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek anarchist movements. It turned out that many of them got their information from Russia Today.”
This war has not taught us anything new, but we have seen that anarchists today are not as ready to clearly take sides as they were during the First and Second World Wars, as well as the Spanish Civil War. Bakunin and Kropotkin could easily take a side, Polish anarcho-syndicalists participated in the Warsaw Uprising, and the International Brigades fought in Spain…
But now anarchists are not unanimous even in their support for Rojava in Syrian Kurdistan
“The war has not changed the views of Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian anarchists at all. We all know that Russia is an imperialist and fascist empire, that the pro-Kremlin dictatorship of Lukashenko in Belarus is fascist, and that Ukraine is an island of freedom among the countries of the former USSR. In the 30 years since the collapse of the USSR, Russian imperialists have pursued aggressive policies in Ichkeria, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, African countries, and so on.”
“If the global anarchist movement does not understand that bad democracies are better than fascist dictatorships, the dividing line will become clear between those who defend freedom and those who are blinded by dogmas, because their ideological uncertainty is infantile, just like their calls for Ukrainians to lay down arms and end the war.I never thought I would live to see the day when international leftists would sing in unison with the far right in support of Putin’s dictatorship and
the wild imperialism of the Kremlin.”
