The team of the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies presented preliminary results of monitoring the state of cultural heritage sites in the temporarily occupied territories. In particular, it concerns the Kherson region: both the occupied and de-occupied parts. This was reported by the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies in its release.
For about six years now, the Institute’s team has been systematically conducting this monitoring, and on November 26, they shared the achievements of 2024 as part of the project “Cultural Heritage of Ukraine during the War: Strengthening the Voices of Ukrainian Experts.” The main focus is on the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
More than 450 cases of damage or destruction of cultural monuments due to shelling and occupation
In 2024 alone, the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies investigated and verified more than 450 cases of destruction and damage to cultural heritage sites in the occupied and frontline territories. Of these, 285 have been documented as part of an ongoing project supported by the USAID/ENGAGE activity, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Pact in Ukraine (since May of this year).
In total, the website, where experts have been keeping a monitoring register since 2018, contains information about the destruction of about 1000 monuments in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Kherson regions, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol: tintin!
The expert monitors of the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies pay the most attention to archaeological monuments, which usually remain out of the media’s attention, except for some high-profile cases. So far, experts have verified the destruction and damage to more than 800 archaeological heritage sites: mounds, settlements, and dirt burial grounds representing Ukrainian history from the Stone Age to the early modern period.
This is how Denys Yashnyi, Head of the Monitoring Group of the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies, began his report: “It would seem that we can talk about the destruction of cultural heritage as much as we want, but when we talk about it as something ordinary, systematic and routine, we are normalizing evil, so we have to talk about it, we have to remind that there are no unimportant cultural heritage sites, no unimportant historical monuments, they are all important, and the destruction of any of them is the erasure of a layer of history of a particular region and the country as a whole.”
Most archaeological sites in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol have suffered from illegal excavations for the implementation of Russian infrastructure projects. In 2022-2023, it was the construction of the Simferopol-Myrnyi road. For the implementation of this project, numerous mounds and settlements of the Bronze Age “Bagai-1”(here) were destroyed.
At the same time, the project monitors record the illegal transfer of objects from Crimean museums to the territory of the Russian Federation by the occupation administrations(tinker!).
In the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Institute’s monitors record the destruction and damage to archaeological heritage sites not only as a result of the full-scale invasion of 2022, but also during the ATO/JFO period. Many archaeological sites were damaged by the construction of fortifications and shelling.
Damage and destruction in the regions of Ukraine
In the Donetsk region, more than 160 cultural heritage sites have been verified as damaged, including more than 80 in the current project (since May 2024). Among those completely destroyed is the Estate B. І. Nemirovych-Danchenko in the village of Neskuchne(wattle and daub!). Damaged: the only monument by Ivan Petrovich Kavaleridze that has been preserved in its original concrete in Sviatohirsk, the complex of buildings of the Sviatohirsk Lavra.
In the Luhansk region, more than 150 cultural heritage sites have been verified as destroyed or damaged, more than 60 of them are in the current project. In addition to the archaeological monuments that suffered the most from the construction of fortifications, the destruction of architectural objects in Lysychansk that formed the so-called “Belgian” cluster was recorded
and one of the oldest railway stations in the Luhansk region – in Popasna(brick!).
In Zaporizhzhia region, the destruction of 180 cultural heritage sites (70 in the current project) has been verified, most of which are archaeological sites that suffered not only from shelling and the construction of Russian fortifications, but also from the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station dam in 2023. Among them is the unique complex of archaeological sites on Cape Lysa Hora in Vasyliv district, which includes more than 20 densely located objects on a small area(tin; tin)
In the Kherson region, thanks to the work of monitors from the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies, the destruction of more than 140 cultural heritage sites (55 of which are part of the current project) has been verified. This applies to both the occupied territories and the areas along the Dnipro River, where the Russian army is actively shelling.
Numerous archaeological sites were destroyed because of the shelling. The national monument of Kamianska Sich, one of the three non-flooded Cossack Sichs where archaeological research was possible, was hit by aerial bombs(tintz), construction of fortifications, and, much more severely than in other regions, by flooding as a result of the Russians’ blowing up the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.
Kherson region also has the highest number of cases of misappropriation of museum property and its use in the occupied territories in Russian propaganda.
- https://ciss.org.ua/ua/sk_page.html?object_code=c474697d6992bfbf74563cbc51d50b96;
- https://ciss.org.ua/ua/sk_page.html?object_code=b471f6f229e7ff2bb37a14f8e01e2955;
- https://ciss.org.ua/ua/sk_page.html?object_code=64b467ba38555978a37fb9ba36c805fd
There is a deliberate Russian policy of “cultural erasure” in the destruction of
monuments to the Holodomor victims in Oleshky, Novomykolaivka, and Nova Kakhovka:
- https://ciss.org.ua/ua/sk_page.html?object_code=f78c2abad03e61542f3498133eca8024;
- https://ciss.org.ua/ua/sk_page.html?object_code=2d4187eddd3c9a7c957789a77691d82e;
- https://ciss.org.ua/ua/sk_page.html?object_code=8efdc78dc1f71d9f12d03c62f5c4a52b;
- https://ciss.org.ua/ua/sk_page.html?object_code=d48cc7d2292c084e3d85924ba610c1c6.
As a monitor of the state of monuments in the Kherson region, Oleksandr Symonenko also provided photographic evidence of Russian crimes against Ukraine’s cultural heritage at the Late Scythian settlements of Hornostaivka and Liubymivka, the Kherson Regional Museum of Local Lore, the Kherson Art Museum, the Beryslav District Museum, the Skadovsk Museum of Local Lore, and the Genichesk Museum of Local Lore; showed how Russians destroy Holodomor memorials and use museums as a base for propaganda of Russian ideology.
Mr. Oleksandr comments on the destruction of the monuments as follows: “What our northern neighbors have done to the monuments of the Kherson region defies any reasonable assessment, only emotional ones. After all, we can say that Kherson region is the center of the southern steppe zone of Ukraine, and it is full of archaeological sites of almost all eras: from the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods in Prysivashsha to the Late Scythian sites located along the Dnipro and Conka rivers to medieval mounds.”
Another important issue concerned people who work with cultural heritage. Denys Yashnyi made an important thesis on this issue: “The Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies, like many institutions, focuses on monuments, but often people are out of focus. Museum workers, monument guards who either ended up in the occupied territories or died during shelling or in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The fact is that when we lose these people, we lose their specific skills, which have been developed over years and decades. The loss of each such person is actually the loss of an interpreter who speaks from things [objects] to us.”
The following issues were also discussed at the press conference:
- cooperation with central authorities and other cultural and law enforcement institutions, including international ones, in protecting and preserving monuments;
- filling state registers of monuments (movable and immovable);
- remote monitoring tools;
- cultural erasure;
- bringing to justice those responsible for the destruction/destruction/stealing of cultural heritage sites;
- about the markers of the presence of Ukrainian culture in the occupied territories;
and others, which you can learn about by watching the video.
Information from the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies
According to the Law of Ukraine “On the Protection of Cultural Heritage,” there are several definitions of monuments, which were discussed at the press conference.
A cultural heritage site is a landmark, structure (work), complex (ensemble), their parts, movable objects associated with them, as well as territories or water bodies (underwater cultural and archaeological heritage sites), other natural, natural-anthropogenic or man-made objects, regardless of the state of preservation, that have conveyed
archaeological, aesthetic, ethnological, historical, architectural, artistic, scientific, or artistic value to the present day and have retained their authenticity.
The following cultural heritage objects are separately distinguished: archaeological, historical, monumental art objects, architectural objects, urban planning objects, landscape art objects, landscape objects, objects of science and technology.
Source: “Watermelon City”
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