Devastation of Ukraine's cultural sites: a war crime

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv
still intact,, sofar!

There were plenty of articles about Russia’s worst war crime i.e the slaughter of civilians. Now UNESCO’s Director-General has added a les­ser war crime saying: We must safeguard the cultural herit­age in Ukr­aine, as a testimony of her past and as a catalyst for fut­ure peace and cohesion. In times of war, culture rallies the national spirit. And when the war is over, national culture matters even more.

In 2019 Russia was elected for a term to the World Heritage Committee. And at the last World Heritage’s sum­m­it (2021), the Rus­sian Fed­eration was selected to host the 2022 conference. UNESCO, the United Nations agency responsible for ov­erseeing international cult­ural her­it­age sites, were pressured by Eu­­r­opean groups to reloca­te the 2022 meeting scheduled for Ka­zan, aft­er Russia invaded Ukraine. Appropriately the Conference was postponed.

In March, as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict worsened, UNESCO became very anxious about threats to cultural her­itage sites across Ukraine.

Town hall, Kharkiv

de zeen 

So UNESCO urgently sought input from Ukrainian museum officials about safe­guarding cultural prop­erty at risk. Tracking the threats to Uk­r­aine’s cultural heritage was Artists at Risk, a global non-profit ag­ency that provided aid to artists in conflict zones.

Ukrainian authorities and UNESCO together marked cultural sites and mon­uments with the distinctive Blue Shield emblem of the 1954 Hague Con­vention (Protection of Cultural Property During Armed Con­f­lict). This Convention, signed by both Russia and Uk­r­aine, protected cultural properties from delib­erate or accid­ental damage during armed conflict

Note that before the war, Ukraine already had 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including Lviv’s Historic City Cent­re. Other sites inscribed on the World Heritage list eg Kyiv’s Saint-Sophia Cathedral and Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra Monastery, were a prior­ity for protection.

Court of Appeal building in central Kharkiv, 

Guardian

By 27th June, UNESCO verified damage to 154 Ukrainian sites: 70 churches, 12 museums, 19 cultural sit­es, 30 historic build­­ings, 16 monuments and 7 libraries. In Kharkiv alone, 30+ heritage sites were destroyed like hospitals, opera house, concert hall and schools. Other crimes incl­­uded destroying a local history museum in Kyiv; bombing a Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Yas­nohorodka and a theatre in the port city Mariupol. The historic centre of Ch­er­nih­iv was wait­ing for world her­it­age status before the Rus­sian invas­ion. Now Ch­er­nihiv’s mayor has accused Rus­sian forces of focusing their bom­b­s on the besieged city’s cultural institutions. Kharkiv's Building of Court Instit­ut­ions, architect Oleksiy Beketov's largest work, was destroyed during a Russian air raid. The roof was torn apart and the interiors burnt. For my family the most impor­tant da­maged site was Babi Yar Holo­caust Memorial Centre in Kyiv, where the Nazis and their Uk­rainian collaborat­ors exterm­inated 33,000 Ukrainian Jews in 1941.

Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre, Mariupol 

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Smaller art objects were protected wherever possible. But the Russian forces successfully stole gold artefacts from a Melitopol Museum that date to C4th BCE Scythian empire, one of Ukraine’s most val­uable collections. The stained glass of Lviv Cathedral was wrapped in shiny protective sheets, as were the statues surrounding the church. Statues located across Kyiv were totally covered with sandbags, against pot­en­t­ial Russian att­acks.

External statues in Kyiv, being protected with sandbags 

Some cultural build­ings will need rebuilding after the war, while oth­ers were totally destroy­ed and may be built de novo. UNESCO experts will cont­inue to ver­ify each bombing report and will add other sites to this list if bomb­ing continues. Afterwards UNESCO will meet Ukrain­ian cul­t­ural prof­ess­ion­als, World Heritage Site managers & museum dir­ec­t­ors, to det­er­mine what technical/fin­an­cial aid can be offered. IF the war ever ends!

All Saints Monastery of Svyatogorsk Lavra, C16th, constructed largely of wood.
The monastery was one of the most important monasteries of the Russian Empire

Fire from shelling in June 2022 burned it to the ground. Wiki

Art historian Waldemar Januszczak visited Ukraine in April to dis­cover how the national art was being protected from Russian bombs. In London just weeks earlier, Janus­z­czak had heard the Dir­ector of the National Museum Poznan had driven a truck to Ukr­aine, to help the Ukrainians hiding their art outside the country.

Driving to Lviv, giant billboards kept looming up, emblaz­oned with stirring Slavic calls to arms. “Be ready to join the army and save Uk­raine”. Correct! Lviv was a beautiful cobbled, gothic city, the ar­ch­itecture with a special Habsburgian mood to it that was rare in West­ern Europe. Januszczak visited the Lviv National Art Gallery, the lar­gest museum in Ukraine where all the nation’s important art treas­ures had already been sent for safekeeping.

Ann­unciation to the Blessed Virgin of the Boh­or­od­chany Iconostasis,

moved from Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum 

Robb Report

Di­r­­ector Taras Voznyak was annoyed that Westerners forgot­ the war ag­ainst Russia re Crimea started in 2014; the present war was part of that first war. Thus Ukraine had pl­enty of time to pre­pare reg­ul­at­ions for moving its national art to safe­ty. Yes many of the Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro trea­sures were moved to Lviv. Or perhaps hidden elsewhere.

Voznyak drove the team out of Lviv to a secret store in a disused mon­astery, and to an old clerical prison surr­oun­d­ed by a high wall. They mar­ched along old corridors packed with thou­s­­ands of icons, thrown away by the Soviet soldiers when they took Uk­raine in 1939, and a very large collection of baroque church sculp­t­ures.

Map of Russia and Ukraine,

note Moscow, Kiev and Kharkiv

Read the UNESCO page 
Based on UNESCO's commitments, I will examine Odessa's situation separately.