How Ukrainians preserve their cultural heritage during war
Despite the fact that it is a war crime to attack cultural heritage, cultural sites are often treated as a second front: looted, damaged or destroyed as a way for an aggressor to assert power, demoralize and control an enemy. – or even erase – a cultural story.
From the very beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, identity has been central to Putin’s agenda. And as cultural sites across the country suffer damage, it is becoming increasingly clear that erasing Ukraine’s cultural and historical markers is an important facet of Russia’s plan.
Ukraine is home to a wide variety of visual and material culture – museums, monuments, archives and architecture – all of which are at high risk of destruction, both collateral and intentional.
We spoke to three experts actively protecting Ukraine’s artistic treasures: Hayden Bassett, director of the Virginia Museum of Natural History’s Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab (CHML); Vasyl Mystko, Director of Communications for Lviv . Art Galleryand Catarina Buchatskiy, co-founder of the shadow project†
If you are interested in remote volunteering, Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) works to identify and archive high-risk sites, digital content and data in Ukrainian cultural heritage institutions.
Or view the Network of European Museum Organizations (NEMO)† They are collecting a list of organizations that have contact with Ukrainians on the ground.
This video is part of our broader reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine†
How Stalin Starved Ukraine
You can find this video and all the others cafemadrid’s videos on Youtube†
