Zelenskyy Imposes Sanctions on Crimea Museums for Stolen Artifacts

On February 5, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree imposing sanctions against museums in the temporarily occupied Crimea, where Russians took valuable exhibits from Kherson museums.

The decree provides for indefinite sanctions against the Chersonesos Tavriya Museum and Reserve and the Central Museum of Tavrida. The occupiers transported paintings, historical artifacts and other valuables stolen from the Kherson Local History and Regional Art Museums to these institutions.

Before the liberation of the right bank of Kherson region, the Russian military looted Kherson museums, taking more than 20,000 pieces of art and historical artifacts.

This decision is aimed at bringing to justice the institutions that contributed to the destruction and theft of Ukrainian cultural heritage.

According to the Kherson Art Museum, the Russian invaders stole more than 10,000 museum items. Among the stolen items are not only paintings, but also graphic works and 12 sculptures, including a majolica by Mikhail Vrubel.

In addition, the museum estimated that the invaders took more than 10 paintings with children as the main characters from their collection.

After that, the museum in Kherson, looted by the occupiers, received protection for more than 800 thousand hryvnias. It will be guarded by the Security Police Department.

Earlier, Intent wrote that Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions were among the ten regions where cultural heritage sites were most affected by Russian aggression.

In July, the total number of affected sites increased by 11. Currently, 1096 cultural heritage sites have been damaged.

Of these, 121 are of national importance, 892 are of local importance, and 83 are newly discovered.

Thus, 314 sites were damaged in Kharkiv region, 150 in Kherson, 125 in Donetsk, 116 in Odesa, 69 in Chernihiv, 69 in Kyiv and Kyiv city, 49 in Zaporizhzhia, 45 in Mykolaiv, 39 in Dnipro, 36 in Lviv, 31 in Luhansk, 27 in Sumy, 10 in Khmelnytsky, 6 in Poltava, 4 in Vinnytsia, 4 in Zhytomyr, 1 in Kirovohrad, and 1 in Cherkasy.

Андрій Колісніченко