Russian forces are stealing art and cultural artifacts from Ukraine on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II, researchers documenting the damage tell NBCNews.
Last fall, Ukrainian troops were closing in on Kherson, rolling back Russian forces who had seized the city after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Before he ordered the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly argued that the idea of a separate Ukrainian national identity was fiction, that Ukraine lacked “real statehood” and that it was part of Russia’s “own history, culture, spiritual space.” Just days after the Feb. 24 invasion, the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum near Kyiv came under bombardment, even though it was not near any fighting or military targets, according to researchers. The shelling ignited a fire that destroyed and damaged multiple works by Prymachenko, whose vivid, fantastical paintings of animalsSatellite imagery shows the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum on Feb.
Using satellite photos, thermal imaging, artificial intelligence tools and on-the-ground research, the U.S.-funded Smithsonian team is sometimes able to verify an incident within hours after it occurs, said Susan Wolfinbarger, the team lead in the State Department’s Office of Advanced Analytics“We’re really leveraging new technologies, new data feeds, to help us both document these things but to also do it quickly and at a scale that really hasn’t been previously attempted,” Wolfinbarger said.
The Hague Convention of 1954 prohibits militaries from targeting and looting museums or other cultural sites. In war crimes trials for conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Mali, international prosecutors wonAs of March, UNESCO said it had verified damage to 248 cultural“We have this list of verified damage, and the numbers keep growing,” said Krista Prikkat, UNESCO’s director for culture and emergencies.
“They were hunting for historic objects,” said Poshyvailo, a co-founder of the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative, which tries to help repair and preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage collections.Sometimes Ukrainians collaborating with occupying Russian forces have enabled the plunder.
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