A blacksmith in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk is practically beating swords into ploughshares, and turning one man’s trash into treasures. Viktor Petrovich Mikhalev takes weapons and ammunition and produces what he calls the flowers of war.

Mikhalev, who trained as a welder, lives and works in a house whose fence and door are decorated with forged flowers and grapes. In his workshop are piles of half-burnt machine guns and shells from the war’s front line. Friends and acquaintances bring them as raw material for his art.

The smell of iron and paint permeates the workshop, also decorated from floor to ceiling with dozens of religious icons. Mikhalev makes the art as a keepsake, a souvenir of the war in eastern Ukraine.

“Real flowers will not last long, and my roses will become a reminder for a long memory,” the blacksmith says.

He began the project when a friend brought him broken machine guns. A month later, he exhibited his war art in a Donetsk museum. Since then, he’s constantly been making what he calls “flowers of war.” In addition, he constructs stands for writing pens from parts of a grenade launcher and a cartridge case.

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