Mick Hartley

From the Times – Erasing history: Putin’s ‘genocidal’ attacks on Ukrainian culture:

Russia is “systematically destroying” Ukrainian cultural heritage, damaging Unesco world heritage sites in targeted strikes and looting artefacts, Ukraine’s minister for culture has warned.

“Russia clearly understands that culture is a matter of national security for Ukraine, and Russia’s destruction of Ukrainian culture is deliberate,” Tetyana Berezhna told The Times….

“The destruction of culture is happening on a massive scale and requires a co-ordinated international approach,” she added.

Russian drones damaged a number of Ukrainian cathedrals, churches and monasteries over the summer, including the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and St Sophia’s Cathedral, an 11th-century architectural masterpiece adorned with golden domes. Both are designated by Unesco as protected world heritage sites.

“It was heartbreaking when Russia, with two drones, attacked Dormition Cathedral. It’s 975 years old and it is a symbol of not only Ukrainian religious tradition but also Ukrainian statehood, as many Ukrainian hetman — rulers — were sponsors or patrons of this place,” Berezhna said….

Since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has completely destroyed 569 cultural heritage sites and damaged a further 2,139, according to ministry statistics. In occupied Ukraine, Russian officials are looting historical artefacts that later appear in museums inside Russia, she said.

“We understand that two million such objects are located in the occupied territories. Nearly 40,000 have been looted and taken to Russia. And time after time, we receive information from our special services that some of the objects are put in Russian museums in Moscow, in St Petersburg, and all the explanations of those items are completely changed to say they are from Russia,” she said.

Rather shamefully, the V&A turns out to have been complicit.

The appropriation of Ukrainian history is a continuation of Russian imperial and Soviet policy, the legacy of which Kyiv is still fighting today, Berezhna added. She has just returned from a visit to London, where she persuaded the Victoria and Albert Museum to reclassify several Ukrainian artefacts erroneously labelled as Russian and exhibit them as part of a temporary exhibition, Sacred Treasures from Kyiv.

“Previously, there were some items placed there as items from Russia with all the Russian explanations and so on. So we had a little decolonisation of at least some of the objects in the V&A,” she said.

President Putin’s campaign against Ukrainian culture amounts to evidence of intent to commit genocide, according to international lawyers documenting Russian war crimes.

“It is evidence that there is an intention to erase the very notion of Ukraine as a separate entity. We can’t ignore what is happening, because it’s not accidental,” said Alex Prezanti, a British barrister and founder of Artemis Chambers. “If your primary goal is to demilitarise Ukraine, then why destroy books that have nothing to do with military tactics? If your primary goal is denazification, then why are you destroying churches and museums?”

As a commenter notes: “There is something particularly contemptible in destroying another nation’s cultural inheritance and then claiming what survives as your own.”

Here’s a link to that exhibition at the V&A.