With the beginning of full-scale aggression, the Russians entered Ukrainian cities and villages and shot monuments to cultural figures, tore down plaques, burned Ukrainian books and sent rockets to the Skovoroda museum. Thus, in addition to murders, looting and destruction, the Russian occupiers resort to another crime on the territory of Ukraine — the destruction of Ukrainian culture.
One of the strategic and military goals is not only the seizure of territory or political pressure, but the purposeful, centuries-long destruction of cultural heritage, identity, and historical memory. All this is part of the undermining of Ukraine’s identity as a separate country, with a claim to Russia’s legal ownership of all its exhibits.
The number of recorded crimes against cultural heritage suggests that these are not isolated cases, but a purposeful policy of the Russian authorities. They know that in order to defeat Ukraine at all levels, it is also necessary to erase the cultural code of the Ukrainian nation, to deprive Ukrainians of their culture, language and way of thinking. Moreover, such actions of the aggressor should be considered as a component of the crime of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
Among the most loud and terrible crimes of the Russians against Ukrainian culture, it is worth mentioning such as the destroyed museum of Hryhoriy Skovoroda in Kharkiv region, the devastated and looted museums in Kherson region, the building of the drama theater in Mariupol destroyed by an airstrike, the destroyed museum of Maria Primachenko in Kyiv region, the burnt wooden hermitage of Sviatohorsk Lavra in Donetsk region, theft of Scythian gold in Melitopol and many others. The list of damaged objects of cultural heritage is not exhaustive because the situation in the temporarily occupied territories is not fully clear. We are talking not only about immovable objects and buildings, but also about museum collections and library collections.
In addition to the destruction of Ukrainian culture, there is another side of the coin with the Russian invaders. In Ukraine, the so-called «black art critics» are groups that steal cultural values, monitor the importance of certain cultural objects and carry out separate cultural operations against Ukraine. Given that Russians treat cultural heritage as colonizers, destroying what they cannot use in their own interests, in particular, to promote their own vision of «great Russian culture», Ukrainians, together with relevant international organizations and foundations, should be vigilant and increase their cultural defense capacity.
Ukrainian culture is strong, and it will stand up against Russian aggression. But the Russians should bear responsibility for such crimes already today, where one of the key points should be restitution — the return of stolen values and the restoration of the integral cultural heritage of the state by replacing values with similar ones. Both general and special prescriptions of international law should also be applied to Russia: UNESCO conventions, UN General Assembly resolutions, the 1970 Convention on Measures to Prohibit and Prevent the Illegal Import and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, the Convention on the Protection of World Cultural Property and natural heritage of 1972, etc.
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