This time of year. Perhaps you were even waiting for them. Another go-around with the main characters of the late summer fields: the sun flowers.

I took the images with one of those obscure settings on my iPhone, called mono stage lighting. It brings out the gorgeous architectural structure and patterns of these plants, but it also seemed fitting given the symbolism of the sunflower for Ukraine – times are dark and not getting any lighter for David defending itself against a Goliath.

I can no longer count the number of text messages and emails I get these days asking for donations towards the Presidential election campaign. The one ask I complied with this week came from a different source and about a different need: Historian Timothy Snyder and actor Mark Hamill are raising funds to provide mine sweeping robots for Ukraines regions that are contaminated with explosive ordinances.

It is not just the danger to life and limb, estimated to last for at least a decade even if the war stopped tomorrow. It is also about food security – if you cannot plant the fields because of the mines, you cannot plant the necessary crops to feed your – and other – people.

Hunger has been a weapon of war or political oppression in that region as much as anywhere else in the world. Stalin’s imposed starvation of Ukrainians in the early 1930s cost the lives of almost 4 million people. And contemporary hunger is not restricted to their own country. Millions of people across the world are dependent on Ukrainian food exports and now lacking. These are often the same people who are experiencing starvation tactics in their own recent or current conflicts in Ethiopia, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and now Gaza.

“In 1998 the International Criminal Court Statute codified starvation methods as a war crime in international armed conflicts. A 2019 amendment expanded this doctrine to cover non-international armed conflicts – conflicts between states and organized armed groups, or between organized armed groups. In addition to food, the legal definition of starvation also includes deprivation of water, shelter and medical care. A few months back, the United Nations’ human rights chief said in an official statement that Israel’s policies regarding aid in Gaza might amount to a war crime.” (Ref.) Russia is believed of doing the same to Ukraine. Investigative reports by international human rights lawyers are right now presented to the International Criminal Court. (Ref.)

Russia is accused of

“… having engaged in an ever-lengthening list of starvation tactics, besieging entrapped populations, attacking grocery stores and agricultural areas and granaries, deploying land mines on agricultural land, blocking wheat-laden ships from leaving Ukrainian harbors and destroying a critical grain export terminal in Mykolaiv. Moreover, although the U.S. and E.U. exempted fertilizers from sanctions (Russia and Belarus are two of the world’s largest producers), Russia has decided to withhold fertilizers from the market.” (Ref.)

And here I thought to escape doom and gloom in the sunflower field…. but there is still hope. I have a cache of color photographs that radiate yellow optimism! Let’s include one.

And here is the Second Piano Rhapsody on Ukrainian themes (1877) by Mykola Lysenko.