Russia to take over Ukrainian museum collections as formal annexation plans announced
Dozens of Ukrainian museums are set to be appropriated by Russia tomorrow as President Vladimir Putin plans to sign a decree annexing four occupied regions, the Kremlin has announced.
Earlier this week referendums on accession to the Russian Federation were held in the territories Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—which cumulatively compare in size to the land mass of Portugal and are home to millions of Ukrainian citizens—that resulted overwhelmingly in favour of Russian leadership. The results have widely been dismissed by the international community as fake.
Thousands of artefacts and heritage pieces that are collectively owned by the Ukrainian government and its subsidiaries will be lost to the occupying nation.
The 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine can be seen as a microcosm for what could now take place after the collections are appropriated. The annexation of Crimea led to an ongoing international court case over Scythian gold loaned from Ukraine to Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum. Russia is demanding that the pieces from Crimean museums be returned to the Black Sea peninsula.
Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Information Policy, Oleksandr Tkachenko, told Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne in August that it was not possible to evacuate museums quickly from Russian occupation. “What is needed is not the opposition of museum directors, as we have often seen in those regions where hostilities have already taken place, but cooperation with local authorities,” he said. “We don't have the budget to evacuate anyone.”
Here is an overview of the museums in each of the occupied regions that will be annexed:
Donetsk
Russian-fuelled separatism in the eastern Ukrainian region and in neighbouring Luhansk in 2014 preceded Putin’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
Mariupol, the second largest city in Donetsk, is a port strategically located on the Sea of Azov, opposite the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. It was encircled by Russian forces shortly after the invasion. Some of its most notable museums have been damaged during the fight for the city. The early 20th century artist Arkhip Kuindzhi was born in Mariupol and a museum dedicated to his work, the Kuindzhi Art Museum, was initially thought to be completely destroyed after an airstrike. Surviving works from the Museum of Local History and the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol were moved to the Donetsk Regional Museum of Local History.
In the city of Donetsk, the Donetsk Republican Art Museum's chief curator, Olga Zagoruiko, gave an interview published on 23 February in Russia’s Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper in which she said the museum's collections are securely stored. “It is not in our competence” to decide about moving them to Russia, Zagoruiko said when asked if that was being considered in case of an “acute crisis”. Read More…
