Apr 7: The Destruction of Ukrainian Cultural Heritage
Articles and Posts: MacKay Zelensky Unesco Heritage Sites in Ukraine Emmanuel Durand Odesa Crimean Tatar Dobritsky Yar Luhansk McGlynn Mariupol
Before reading…
Since March 2022, I’ve been collecting articles and posts about Russia’s destruction of Ukrainian heritage sites and the looting of Ukraine’s museums. Ukrainians have done much to protect their cultural heritage from Russian missile attacks and looting, but so much has been lost. We may think that the destruction of these sites and the stealing of artefacts is simply part of warfare: it’s not. There is a darker more sinister intent.
On February 22, 2023, The United Nations released this statement:
The deliberate destruction and damage of sites, institutions, and objects of cultural, historical, and religious significance in Ukraine must cease, UN experts* said today. They expressed deep concern at the continued denigration of the history and identity of Ukrainian people as a justification for war and hatred. The experts warned that attacks against Ukrainian culture, history, and language by the Russian Federation may amount to an attempt to erase their identity. They issued the following statement:
Reports indicate that some sites were intentionally targeted, including buildings clearly marked as shelters for local residents, including children. The indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on densely populated areas, and the damage caused to civilian infrastructure in the process, are of such magnitude as to suggest a deliberate campaign of destruction.
We are also concerned by the severe targeting of Ukrainian cultural symbols. Cultural resources – such as repositories of Ukrainian literature, museums, and historical archives – are being destroyed, and there is a widespread narrative of demonisation and denigration of Ukrainian culture and identity promoted by Russian officials, along with calls for ideological repression and strict censorship in the political, cultural and educational spheres. Let us be clear: the Ukrainian people have a right to their identity. Nobody can violate this right.
The Russian forces and leadership wish to erase all traces of Ukrainian identity from the face of the earth. It’s deliberate. Ukrainians and their allies won’t let that happen.
Source: Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information as of 18:00 on 14 October 2022
The Destruction of Ukrainian Culture Sites
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is being accompanied by the destruction and pillaging of historical sites and treasures on an industrial scale, Ukrainian authorities said.
In an interview with the Associated Press (AP), Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artefacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums.
The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, the minister added.
He said: “The attitude of Russians toward Ukrainian culture heritage is a war crime.”
Mariupol’s exiled city council said Russian forces pilfered more than 2,000 items from the city’s museums.
Among the most precious items were ancient religious icons, a unique handwritten Torah scroll, a 200-year-old bible and more than 200 medals, the council said.
Also looted were artworks by painters Arkhip Kuindzhi, who was born in Mariupol, and Crimea-born Ivan Aivazovsky, both famed for their seascapes, the exiled councillors said.
The UN’s cultural agency is keeping a tally of sites being struck by missiles, bombs and shelling.
With the war now in its eighth month, the agency says it has verified damage to 199 sites in 12 regions.
They include 84 churches and other religious sites, 37 buildings of historic importance, 37 buildings for cultural activities, 18 monuments, 13 museums and 10 libraries, Unesco said.
Culture in the Crosshairs
By Mark Doman, Thomas Brettell, and Alex Palmer, ABC News, 13 Sep 2022
Monique: This is an extraordinary reportage of Emmanuel Durand’s work to provide 3D models of Ukraine’s destroyed cultural heritage sites. It is well-worth your time to read through the report.
Durand, an expert in the 3D laser scanning of structures, had arrived in Ukraine’s second-largest city on a 17-day mission to document the destruction of culturally significant sites across the nation.
In its ruthless campaign to capture territory, the Russian military has pummelled huge swathes of the country into the ground.
In addition to the loss of homes, lives and livelihoods, scores of Ukraine’s historic buildings, monuments and cultural centres — some of which date back centuries — have also been damaged or destroyed.
Durand hoped that by producing intricate 3D models, he could offer the world a unique perspective of what was happening to some of these Ukrainian sites.
Damaged cultural sites in Ukraine verified by UNESCO
Please consult the website to see the cultural sites that have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine region by region.
As of 22 March 2023, UNESCO has verified damage to 248 sites since 24 February 2022 – 107 religious sites, 21 museums, 89 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 19 monuments, 12 libraries.
UNESCO is conducting a preliminary damage assessment for cultural properties* by cross-checking the reported incidents with multiple credible sources. These published data which will be regularly updated do not commit the Organization. UNESCO is also developing, with its partner organizations, a mechanism for independent coordinated assessment of data in Ukraine, including satellite image analysis, in line with provisions of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
*The term “cultural property” refers to immovable cultural property as defined under Article 1 of the 1954 Hague Convention, irrespective of its origin, ownership or status of registration in the national inventory, and facilities and monuments dedicated to culture, including memorials.
Charlotte Higgins, Sandbag sculpture: how Kyiv is shielding statues from Russian bombs- The Guardian
One of those missiles cratered a children’s playground a few metres from a monument to Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s national poet. Fundamental in creating a Ukrainian-language literature, he was exiled by Tsar Nicholas I and banned for writing or making art for a decade. In a neat turn of history, his monument, when it was erected in 1939, replaced an earlier statue of that very same Russian ruler.
Museums race against time to save Ukraine's cultural treasures
By Atika Shubert, CNN, 8 March 2022
The walls of Lviv's National Museum stand bare. Elaborate gold lacquered panels, on display after being recovered from 17th century Baroque churches, have been bundled up and hidden in the basement in a race to save the city's cultural treasures from possible Russian attack.
"Today we see how Russia is shelling residential areas (and) even people that are evacuating," says National Museum Director of Lviv, Ihor Kozhan. "They guaranteed they wouldn't but now we can't trust them. And we need to take care of our heritage because this is our national treasure." [continue reading]
Ukraine Urges UNESCO To Add Odesa To World Heritage List- RFE/RL
This is an extraordinary photographic report. Please take time to look through it.
Ukraine formally submitted a request for the historic center of Odesa to be designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the designation is vital to defend Ukraine's cultural legacy from Russia, which he referred to as a terrorist state. RFE/RL takes a look at some of Odesa's landmarks.
Ukrainian Culture Under Attack: Erasure of Ukrainian Culture in Russia's War Against Ukraine- Pen America 100
Written By Liesl Gerntholtz, Director, PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center
President Putin, senior Russian officials, government think tanks, and pro-government public intellectuals have repeatedly denied that Ukraine exists as a nation or that Ukrainians have an identity and culture distinct from that of Russia and Russians. This claim has been used to justify the war and occupation and negate Ukraine’s claim to sovereign nationhood. This rhetoric dates back to Russian Imperial and Soviet times. During Soviet rule Ukrainians were subjected to a deliberate attempt to destroy them as a nation that included efforts to suppress their language.
Marjana Varchuk, the director of communications at The Khanenko Museum in Kyiv, which was partially damaged in an airstrike on October 10, 2022, agreed. She said: “Destroying our culture is the purpose of everything the Russians are doing. Culture and language strengthen our nation, they remind us of our history. That’s why the Russians are shelling our monuments, our museums, and our history. That’s what they’re fighting with. They want to destroy everything and substitute our history. In fact, the main problem is our common post-Soviet period heritage, when the Ukrainian language was banned for 70 years. At least 400 years before that, the Ukrainian language, literature, theater, everything associated with our history, was banned and destroyed by the Russians who substituted the truth with a lie.” [continue reading]
Russian troops are destroying cultural heritage in the Luhansk region
The Head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration Serhii Haidai informed on March 9, 2023, that despite the prohibition, including international organizations, to visit the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, it is already known that Russian military destroyed objects of architectural heritage in the Luhansk region (east of Ukraine).
The Head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration Serhii Haidai
“We do not have access to the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, and international organizations can not also arrive there. However, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on February 24 of last year, while we were directly on the territory of the Luhansk region, we saw with our own eyes the destruction that Russian soldiers did in Ukrainian cities and villages,” explained the Head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration.
In particular, Serhii Haidai named the architectural monuments destroyed by Russians in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
“I can say that the theater in Severodonetsk was destroyed, and the Belgian heritage in Lysychansk was also shot by Russian troops,” said the Head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration.
UNESCO Is Training European Nations in How to Save Ukrainian Art Looted by Russia
By Tessa Solomon, Art News, 19 January 2023
As Russia has devastated Ukraine’s cities with missile strikes and ground assaults, it has also robbed the nation of thousands of its artistic treasures. While the Ukraine’s cultural institutions tally their staggering losses, UNESCO is pursuing new strategies to stop looted art from crossing the besieged nation’s borders.
The United Nations’s cultural body has partnered with Poland’s Culture Ministry to train law enforcement in countries bordering Ukraine on its west side in how to identify and recover art stolen from Ukraine by Russia. Authorities in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova, as well as representatives from Ukraine, are undergoing three days of workshops in the Polish capital of Warsaw this week, per the Associated Press.
'Just the way the Nazis did': Evidence suggests Russians are stealing art from Ukraine on a World War II scale
At the Kherson Regional Art Museum, a team of armed Russians in civilian clothes arrived along with several large trucks and buses. Over five days, they hauled away more than 11,000 pieces of art, including paintings, sculptures, graphics and other works from Ukraine and around the world, said Alina Dotsenko, the director of the museum.
“It was obvious that it was all planned. The decision to loot the museum was not made on the spot,” Dotsenko said. “It was all carefully planned.”
The theft, verified by human rights monitors and independent scholars, was not an isolated incident.