“Maybe Culture is the Enemy for Them”: The Race to Save Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage

On 24 February 2022, Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and “an assault on Ukrainian freedom and liberty.” Since then, Ukrainian forces have reclaimed over 50% of territory seized by Russia, but it has not been without considerable conflict and dire consequences. Other than the destruction of numerous Ukrainian towns and cities, Russian forces are accused of committing heinous and barbaric war crimes including, but not limited to, torture, deliberate attacks on civilians and civlian targets, the murder of Ukrainian POWs, and the intentional destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage and property.

As of August 2024, UNESCO has verified the destruction of 435 sites of cultural heritage and property—140 religious sites, 215 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 31 museums, 32 monuments, 16 libraries, 1 archive. On their website, UNESCO has divided the sites based on the regions from which they were destroyed. The region with the most damaged sites is the Donetsk Region in the southeast, with 120 damaged sites, and the region with the least amount of damaged sites is the Poltova Region in the northeast. The large-scale destruction levied on these sites of religious, cultural, social, regional, national, and international importance is despicable. And unforgivable. 

“Are Ukrainian heritage sites and historical artefacts being lost as collateral damage amidst the chaos of war?” asks Tom Seymour of the Art Newspaper. Or is it an intentional move by the Russians to “deny the Ukrainian people the places that provide them with a collective memory and shared history”? 

In an Australian Broadcasting Corporation podcast hosted by Julian Morrow, curator and art historian Konstantin Akinsha reported that the Russians have been destroying museum buildings and turning their collections into ashes. “[The] other side of the problem is that in little towns which are occupied by Russians, we have the first cases of random looting of museums,” he shared with Morrow. 

While many galleries and museums have been moving their collections into storage or trying to evacuate them, Akinsha says that this is not possible for all curators and museum directors, some of which have become “cellar hermits” as they protect their art. In April 2022, the New York Times reported that Scythian gold dating to the 4th century BC were looted from a museum in Melitopol in southern Ukraine. Leila Ibrahimova, the director of the Melitopol Museum of Local History, and her team tried their very best to hide “historic artifacts in cardboard boxes” and “stash the boxes in a dank cellar.” One day, in March 2022, Russian troops ordered her to take them to the Scythian gold at the museum at gunpoint. Close to 200 items were stolen from the museum that day, with a Russian crew filming part of the loot. “Maybe culture is the enemy for them,” she said to the NYT. Historians have declared the Melitopol looting “an even more egregious attempt to appropriate, and perhaps destroy, Ukraine’s cultural heritage.”

In the United States, the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab (CHML) in Virginia is dedicated to reviewing satellite imagery, remote sensing and open-source media and footage to document this wide scale destruction. The Director of the CHML, Hayden Bassett, argues that more than just satellite imagery is needed to detect it, however. “We need local partners to conduct specialist inspections, structural assessments and collections assessments,” he shared with The Art Newspaper. “That is the sort of research we need from heritage practitioners across the sector in the months and years ahead.”

“Cultural heritage has few friends during war,” write Ian Kujit, Pavlo Shydlovskyi, and William Donaruma. But the few friends it has have the potential to affect major change. In late 2022, the J. Paul Getty Trust committed $1 million to protect Ukraine’s cultural heritage. This grant was made possible by the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas, or ALIPH. ALIPH’s mission, according to their website, is to “act in favour of cultural heritage in conflict areas via an aid programme which enables it to be flexible and to react quickly.” Along with current action plans to protect cultural heritage in Gaza, ALIPH has adopted an action plan for rapid response in Ukraine. 

This action plan is supported by five external fundings totalling $6 million dollars. Along with the Getty Foundation, the European Union, the Principality of Monaco, the US State Department, and ALIPH themselves have committed grants to the cause. The 3 main areas of action for the protection of Ukrainian cultural property and heritage include (1) museums, libraries, and archives, (2) sites and monuments, and (3) support to heritage professionals. As of June 2024, ALIPH reports that they have completed 158 of 202 active projects with a series of protective preventative measures implemented in major cities like Odessa, where “shock-proof armored film” was installed on the windows of major historical and cultural buildings. 

In terms of their documentation, ALIPH finances 3D and photogrammetry which are used by Ukrainian operators to “scan and document monuments at risk across the country for their potential future conservation.” They have also engaged with a number of stabilization projects, including the installation of a temporary roof for the Research Institute of Venereology in Kharkiv, covering the broken windows and doors of the Odessa Museum of Fine Arts, and the updating of the alarm system for the Treasury building of the National Museum of History of Ukraine in Kyiv. They have also funded the creation of 4 mobile laboratories that will enable the National Research and Restoration Center, with branches in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Odessa, to engage in emergency conservation work in the country’s State museums. 

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ALIPH also funds initiatives in Ukraine to support heritage professionals and organizes webinars to share the experiences and advice of curators from all over the world with respect to preserving and digitizing heritage. As far as their entrée into the social media world, they published a YouTube video 6 months ago dedicated to sharing the work that they are doing in Ukraine.

The funds from the Getty Trust will go toward providing for the safe storage of artifacts and works of art in the country along with funding on-site conservation, upgrading storage sites, and supporting the salaries of Ukrainian cultural heritage professionals, as Elaine Velie with Hyperallergic writes. Valéry Freland, the executive director at ALIPH, wrote in a press release that “the ongoing need to protect cultural heritage in Ukraine has become even more urgent in recent weeks, as attacks in the region are increasing and the onset of winter is creating additional risks. This new funding will help cultural heritage professionals face the many challenges ahead.” 

Among other initiatives to protect Ukraine’s cultural heritage include a $2.2 million fund by PEN America to help visual artists, Google’s Ukraine Is Here digital archive, the Ukrainian Heritage Response Fund from the World Monuments Fund, and a 5 million euro donation by the European Commission to support Ukrainian culture organizations and artists outside of the country. But their work is nowhere near over. 

Along with the funds committed to protecting these sites and artifacts, the European Parliament released “Protecting cultural heritage from armed conflicts in Ukraine and beyond,” research requested by the Committee on Culture and Education. While their key findings and solutions comprise a rather idyllic view of a country’s priorities and resource divisions amid conflict, they allude to the applicable international law and policy frameworks that support the safeguarding and protection of cultural heritage during armed conflict.

As cultural heritage is protected under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), any deliberate targeting or destruction of it is a direct violation of the IHL. Under the IHL, the principle of distinction, or the general rule of it, “permits direct attacks only against the armed forces of the parties to the conflict, while the peaceful civilian population must be spared and protected against the effects of the hostilities.” According to the IHL, cultural property cannot be targeted in armed conflict except in certain extenuating circumstances: 

(i) if the property becomes a legitimate military objective, effectively contributing to military action; and (ii) if the capture, neutralisation or destruction of the cultural property in question offers a definite military advantage….Finally, according to the principle of precautions in attacks, all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid (and minimise) incidental damage to civilian objects, which include historic monuments or religious buildings for example.

At the same time, while the Principles of the Geneva Convention (1949) do not necessarily protect cultural heritage, their rules are definitely applicable to cultural heritage, cultural objects, and places of worship. Given that the EU, including Russia and Ukraine, are parties of the Geneva Convention, they are obligated to abide under these rules. And if they violate these rules, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), these States “must make full reparation for the loss or injury it has caused. In turn, individuals responsible for war crimes must be searched for, investigated and prosecuted.” While these States can indeed enforce the rules through their own national legal systems, diplomatic channels, or international dispute resolution mechanisms, they are usually left to the devices of an international court or the United Nations who may “establish a tribunal to investigate breaches.”

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But there are many issues with this “ideal” standard of international conduct. The IHL assumes that every country acts with dignity and respect to uphold the morals of the international community. We have to assume that every political leader, every country, ever person will willingly abide by these rules to uphold culture and property. Nevertheless, some political leaders (and therefore their countries) believe that they are above the law or that these protocols, conventions, and provisions do not apply to them. While international humanitarian law as a whole—also known as the law of armed conflict or the law of war—“seeks to alleviate the human suffering inherently caused by war,” one of the main goals of war is to weaken an enemy’s military potential, which is inevitably tied to tragedy and loss of life. 

In an ideal world, then, there would be a body of governance that oversees and holds countries and leaders accountable that has no connection to a country, a culture, a people, or an identity. But this is fundamentally impossible, for we all hold ethnicities, religious beliefs, culture, alliances, identities, and nationalistic ties to and pride for our countries of origin. 

So what is the “real-world” solution? Benjamin Charlier and Tural Mustafayev write that “the international system of protection of cultural property in times of armed conflict is better equipped today than at any time in history.” And in a world where public sensitivity and opinion is our main modus operandi, it seems that the best solution is to expose the crimes, atrocities, violations, and abuses in the international court of public opinion.

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We recognize that all the international conventions, laws, and protocols are more political than legal and they work “slowly if at all.” The enforcement of international law relies heavily on the power and desire of a self-enforcing international community that respects the ratified conventions and laws. But those who engage in these atrocities and war crimes have no boundaries, no honor, no shame. Thus, self-policing fails for those despotic tyrants who leave paths of destruction in their wake.

And even though the international community has put laws and rules into place that govern the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflicts, they are always targeted, desecrated, and destroyed. Because to them, an erasure of art is an erasure of culture. And an erasure of culture is an erasure of people. 

As Ukraine’s cultural world strives to stay alive during these trying times, “this war is as much about culture as it is about land.” For the protection of culture ensures the survival of a people. It is clear that the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine is an attempt to erase Ukraine’s history, culture, heritage, and identity. 

But Ukraine is here. Ukraine’s people are here. Ukraine’s culture is here. Ukraine’s art is here. And it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

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(Cover Image: What remains of the Church of the Holy Mother in Bohorodychne, Ukraine after a raid in May 2022, Sapiens Anthropology Magazine)