As Ukraine's frontline cities continue to come under attack, museums holding historical and cultural artifacts are working to relocate valuable collections to safer parts of the country.
“Physical damage is a threat because of air strikes,” says Olha Sahaydak, head of Ukraine’s Coalition of Cultural Workers. “For example, when the Bristol Hotel was targeted in Odesa, the Museum of Literature and the Philharmonic were also damaged,” she says.
But experts say just 10 percent of the endangered items have been safeguarded so far.
More than 3 million items in museum collections are left in Ukrainian-held territories near the front lines, according to Sahaydak.
In the Zaporizhzhya region, which is partially under Russian control, museum officials are working to save objects that represent Ukrainian identity.
Viktoria Vodopyan, director of Zaporizhzhya’s Regional Museum, says they have decided to save traditional embroidered shirts known as vyshyvanka along with embroidered towels.
“We saw what was happening in the [partially occupied] Donetsk and Luhansk regions after 2014 and how the identity of the Ukrainian people was being destroyed,” says Vodopyan.
Museum officials also want to safeguard against the looting of cultural treasures if Ukrainian loses more territory to Russia.
When Russian forces temporarily occupied the city of Kherson in 2022, witnesses reported the theft of paintings, gold artifacts, and religious icons.
