Ukraine, Ivankiv Museum of Local History destroyed: first known cultural casualty

The war in Ukraine is beginning to claim victims even in cultural heritage. In fact, the Museum of Local History in Ivankiv, a small town of ten thousand inhabitants on the outskirts of the capital Kiev, where a battle between the Russian and Ukrainian armies is underway, was destroyed as early as last February 25 (but the news has spread in the last few hours). This was announced in a Facebook post by the director of the Vyshhorod Cultural and Historical Reserve, Vlada Litovchenko. The news was later confirmed this morning by Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry in a tweet. Also on Twitter, journalist Bogdan Voron posted a video of the museum fire.

“Russia’s armed attack on Ukraine,” Litovchenko wrote on his Facebook page yesterday, “is destroying numerous civilian and cultural heritage sites in Ukraine. Countless historical and architectural monuments and archaeological sites are threatened by artillery shelling and the uncontrolled movement of heavy military trucks. Another irreparable loss of Ukraine’s historical and cultural heritage is the destruction of the Ivankiv Museum of Local History on Feb. 25 during these hellish days for our country, buried in the village of Bolotnya, Ivankivsky (now Vyshhorod) district, Kiev oblast.” In his post, Litovchenko also calls on Russia to comply with the Hague Convention, which it signed on a par with Ukraine.

During the fire that led to the destruction of the museum, about twenty works by naïve artist Maria Prymachenko (1908-1997), one of the country’s most representative artists, who also exhibited abroad and was admired by Pablo Picasso, were lost. The museum had been opened in 1981 and had undergone a renovation between 2016 and 2018. The collection of Prymachenko’s works was the museum’s flagship and represents a very serious loss to the country’s artistic heritage.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Minister of Culture, Oleksandr Tkachenko, has appealed to UNESCO to demand that Russia be expelled from the organization and to change the venue of the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee, which is scheduled for June 19-30 in Russia’s very own city of Kazan’. “Russia’s armed attack on Ukraine,” Tkachenko wrote on his Telegram channel, “is currently destroying numerous civilian and cultural heritage sites in Ukraine. Countless historical and architectural monuments and archaeological sites are threatened by artillery shelling and the uncontrolled movement of heavy military trucks. Since 2014, the Russian Federation has systematically violated international humanitarian law and international conventions on the protection of cultural heritage, particularly on the Crimean Peninsula. Its actions have already damaged the ancient city of Cherson, which is on the World Heritage List, as well as the Bakhchisaray Palace of the Crimean Khans, and other cultural heritage sites.”

Ukraine, Ivankiv Museum of Local History destroyed: first known cultural casualty

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