A controversial North Center mural of a Ukrainian refugee who was stabbed to death last summer was vandalized.
Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, is depicted in the mural from the shoulders up, wearing a blue shirt and soft gaze on her face. Her name is written in white above the dates 2002-2025. Zarutska was fatally stabbed last summer while riding a train home from work in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Republicans, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, have blamed Democrats’ “soft-on-crime” policies for the stabbing. The man charged in Zarutska’s death has a record of robbery and had been arrested 14 times in the last 10 years.
The mural, along with similar ones in major cities around the U.S., was part of a campaign backed by Elon Musk and launched by Eoghan McCabe, CEO of artificial intelligence service Intercom.
As of Monday evening, the center of the mural was dotted with black splotches of paint.
Even before it was defaced, the mural received mixed reviews from the Ukrainian community. Some saw the mural, near the intersection of Montrose and Western, as a welcome homage to Zarutska and other Ukrainian refugees.
“It’s good to keep this memory of this innocent girl,” Halyna Parasiuk, an archivist at the Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago, previously told the Chicago Sun-Times.
But others felt the mural was misguided and in poor taste. Zarutska’s family wasn’t asked permission to display her face and name prominently on a building, according to Mariya Dmytriv-Kapeniak, president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Illinois chapter, who said she’s connected to Zarutska’s community in North Carolina.
“If someone really cares about war refugees, there’s a lot of work you can do to help them, other than to paint a mural without family’s permission and just sign a poor girl’s name on it,” Dmytriv-Kapeniak said last month.
The Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago and Dmytriv-Kapeniak didn’t respond to requests for comment on the mural being defaced.
A similar mural was requested by a resident of the 36th Ward, Ald. Gilbert Villegas told the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. Villegas’ office didn’t respond to requests for comment, and it’s unclear where that proposal stands and if another mural will be painted.
The owner of the building that displays the mural and artist of the mural, known as Sav45, didn’t respond to requests for comment.