Theft of paintings, theft of works of art, theft of documents and evidence of the pastmeans depriving the people of their identity, their cultural roots, their history. And that’s exactly what’s happening in Ukraine throughRussian armywhich, in addition to bombing cities, without a twinge of conscience for schools and hospitals, capturing the population and forcing them to take refuge in subway stations that live for weeks without electricity, gas and water, conducts reviews of the main museums of the country in order to plunder them, conduct the biggest looting of works since the Nazi era. Under the pretext of protecting the works from bombing, they are immediately disconnected from the walls, packed and taken across the border. An operation that is so reminiscent of the methods used by the Nazis, who stole hundreds of thousands of art treasures from Jewish families between the 1930s and 1940s, which in some cases were never found again.
The massacre of the Ukrainian cultural heritage, which is gradually leaving the country, not knowing when it will return and whether it will return at all. An operation that could constitute yet another war crime like many already condemned by President Zelenskiy. Asset cataloging is still ongoing, but thefts have already been reported in several eastern cities, including Kherson, Mariupol, Melitopol and Kakhovka, in a total of 30 museums. Major damage was reported in the Kherson Regional Art Museum where in October last year Russian soldiers entered en masse, tore the exhibited works from the walls, packed them in sheets of cardboard and took them away. The unprecedented violence, perpetuated casually “as if it were nonsense”, was condemned by some eyewitnesses. The newspaper “New York Times. “We’ll have to initiate legal cases,” explains Alina Dotsenko, director of the Kherson Museum, to the newspaper. “We must prepare to get the works returned. Our collection will be divided, and it will be difficult to understand where many of the works in our museum will end up.. The big international trial over Russia should be celebrated.”
Also in Kherson, bronze statues from parks, books from an old scientific library, and even ancient relics were taken out. such as the remains of the bones of Grigory Potemkin, the Russian leader considered the founder of both Kherson and Odessa, totaling 15 thousand assets. Under the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, also referred to simply as the 1954 Hague Convention, which both Russia and Ukraine have signed, such an unjustified deduction can be considered a violation of international law. The Russian regime will also have to answer for this.
Source: Elle