Superhero contra butcher: Zelensky and Putin in political cartoons on Russian aggression.

This article examines the discursive dimension of the Russian–Ukrainian war as expressed through political humour, focusing on multimodal analysis of political cartoons from Ukrainian, Russian, and international sources. It analyzes supportive and subversive humour targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin by exploring the interaction of verbal and nonverbal elements, presentation settings, and the construction of "Self" and "Other" images within cartoons. The study finds that Ukrainian and international cartoons predominantly use supportive humour toward Ukraine and subversive humour toward Putin, often depicting him alongside historical authoritarian figures, while Russian cartoons tend to portray Putin supportively and Zelensky subversively. The article employs multimodal discourse analysis combined with framing and content analysis to reveal how political cartoons function as both cultural documents and instruments in the conflict's media discourse.