On 18th May the world marks the International Museums Day, established in 1977 by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). This year this celebration of culture is being held in the shadow of the ongoing war in Ukraine, where every day a part of the European heritage perishes, along with the people. Museums are an...
During the construction of defences and trenches on the territory of the whole Ukraine valuable archaeological relics are being found. In the Odessa region, members of the Territorial Defence Force found, among others, amphorae dating back to the 5th-4th centuries BC. The items were transferred to the Odessa Museum of Archaeology at the National Academy...
Despite the efforts by the curators of the Melitopol Local Lore Museum, Russian soldiers have found and looted the local priceless collection of Scythian gold. According to the Crimean Tatar Information Centre, almost 2 thousand of the museum’s artifacts were stolen. Among them were 300 gold objects – the Scythian gold (198 objects came from...
As a result of a Russian rocket fire, the National Museum of Hryhoriy Skovoroda in the village of Skovorodynivka, Kharkiv Oblast (region), has been burnt down. This has undoubtedly been one of the most severe losses to the Ukrainian heritage since the beginning of the war. The museum was located in the 18th century manor...
OdessaVorontsov Palace, one of the city’s the gems of 19th-century architecture, has suffered damage as a result of recent rocket fire. Explosions have damaged the windows, bas-reliefs on the facade and the roofing. With the city’s precious architecture under threat, Mayor Gennady Trukhanov has appealed to UNESCO to enter Odessa onto the World Heritage List....
As a result of a Russian bombardment on 1 May, the Lysychansk Gymnasium in Luhansk Oblast (region) of Ukraine burnt down. The 19th century historic school building – along with surrounding buildings – was part of the infrastructure of the former Lysychansk Soda Factory. The location of the factory was suggested to the Tsar by...
On 8 May, a Russian shelling damaged the Jewish cemetery in the small historic town of Hlukhiv (Glukhov), located on the territory of a national reserve in the Sumy Oblast (region). The historical necropolis contains around one and a half thousand graves from the 19th and 20th centuries. Victims of the pogrom (massacre) of 1918...
One of the first pictures taken by photographers in the town of Borodianka near Kiev ravaged by the Russians depicts ruins of a residential building. It shows remains of walls and a kitchen cabinet with an intact ceramic figurine of a cockerel standing in it. The cockerel is a type of jug made at the...
he 6th Meeting of the Informal European Network of Committees for UNESCO is taking place in Reykjavik, 8-10 May 2022 under the theme “From Strategy to Action”. The opening plenary session of the meeting was devoted to assistance to Ukraine. It was virtually attended by Artur Oganov, Secretary General of the Ukrainian Committee for UNESCO....
The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine has already recorded more than 300 cases of destruction of the Ukrainian cultural heritage by Russians. The collected data is posted on https://culturecrimes.mkip.gov.ua/ and comes from 12 regions of the country. Most destruction has been reported in Kharkiv region (including Kharkiv itself), Donetsk region (mainly in...
