Russian forces have taken thousands of Ukrainian cultural objects during the war

Russian Occupation Leaves Ukrainian Museums Empty as Cultural Heritage Vanishes

In late 2022, when Alina Dotsenko returned to the Kherson Art Museum after Ukrainian forces reclaimed the southern city from Russian occupiers, she confronted a devastating reality: thousands of irreplaceable artworks had disappeared.

“I walked in and saw empty storage rooms, empty shelves. My legs gave way, and I just sat down by the wall, like a child,” recalled Dotsenko, the museum’s director.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the museum housed more than 14,000 works in a collection that spanned global artistic traditions “ranging from America to Japan.” As Russian forces retreated from Kherson, they systematically loaded much of this cultural treasure onto trucks bound for Russian-annexed Crimea, according to Dotsenko and video evidence captured by local residents.

Nearly 10,000 pieces remain unaccounted for today, their fate uncertain amid the ongoing conflict.

Ukraine is now amplifying calls for accountability as Russia seeks reentry into global cultural forums. The upcoming Venice Biennale plans to include Russian representatives for the first time since 2022, a decision Ukrainian officials have strongly criticized, arguing the event “must not become a stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage.”

The Kherson case represents a rare instance where the extent of cultural looting can be precisely documented. Years before the war, Dotsenko had presciently begun creating a comprehensive digital archive, photographing each item in the museum’s collection. During the Russian occupation, she hid these hard drives, later retrieving them when Ukrainian forces regained control of the city.

This meticulous documentation now constitutes the most detailed record of wartime cultural property theft in Ukraine, enabling prosecutors to collaborate with Interpol to track missing artworks and build cases against those responsible.

However, across much of Ukraine’s conflict zones, such documentation simply doesn’t exist. Cultural losses can only be pursued through legal channels if they can be proven item by item—a significant challenge in regions where inventory records have been destroyed or removed.

The Russian Culture Ministry has not responded to requests for comment regarding the alleged removal of Ukrainian cultural property. Russian-appointed officials in occupied territories have previously characterized such removals as “protective measures” during active hostilities.

Kirill Stremousov, the former Russian-installed deputy administrator in Kherson who died shortly before the city’s liberation, had claimed the removed items would “definitely return” once fighting ceased.

The pattern of cultural displacement extends beyond Kherson. Halyna Chumak, former director of the Donetsk Regional Art Museum, fled Russian-controlled Donetsk in 2014, carrying whatever documentation she could salvage—catalogs covering just over 1,000 of the museum’s approximately 15,000 artworks.

For a year, Chumak transported these catalogs through checkpoints into Ukrainian-controlled territory, carefully avoiding drawing attention from pro-Russian forces who searched her at each crossing. These partial records now represent the only surviving evidence of the museum’s collection.

Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleksandr Velychko is currently working to digitize these catalogs—a painstaking process that required over three months to process about 400 works. Once completed, the database will provide Ukrainian authorities with at least a partial legal foundation to claim ownership of missing cultural property.

Ukrainian officials indicate that many cases across the country mirror the Donetsk situation more than Kherson’s well-documented losses. Anna Sosonska, deputy head of a war crimes unit at Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office, reports that her department is handling 23 criminal proceedings involving cultural crimes, encompassing 174 episodes of looting, damage, and destruction.

Prosecutors frequently rely on open-source intelligence, tracking artworks through photographs, auction records, and other digital traces—a labor-intensive process that cannot reconstruct entire collections but may help identify specific stolen pieces that appear on the market.

“It takes time, but cultural crimes fall under international law and have no statute of limitations,” Sosonska noted, suggesting that accountability may eventually be possible even years after the thefts.

According to Ukraine’s Culture Ministry, the destruction of cultural heritage extends far beyond museum looting. As of March, Russia had reportedly destroyed or damaged 1,707 cultural heritage sites and 2,503 cultural infrastructure facilities, including the notorious bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theatre.

The ministry estimates that over 2.1 million museum objects remain in Russian-occupied territories. Of the territories Ukraine has reclaimed since 2022, over 35,000 museum items are confirmed to have been removed by Russian forces.

Russia has moved to formalize control over seized collections. In 2023, it amended legislation to incorporate 77 Ukrainian museums in the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions into its national catalog—a move critics say effectively prohibits the return of looted works.

A recent case has offered a glimmer of hope for accountability. In March, a Polish court ruled that Oleksandr Butiahin, a Russian national, can be extradited to Ukraine over allegations he conducted illegal archaeological excavations in Crimea, removing artifacts from sites Ukraine considers its cultural heritage. The case, though still subject to appeal, represents the first time a Russian national could face prosecution for crimes against Ukraine’s cultural heritage linked to occupied territory.

For museum workers like Dotsenko, who has dedicated half a century to her institution, the struggle remains deeply personal. Speaking at an exhibition in Kyiv featuring reproductions of the paintings taken from Kherson, she expressed a resolute hope: “While these works are still in captivity, we all hope the situation will be resolved in favor of the Kherson Art Museum. I didn’t dedicate 50 years of my life to this museum for nothing.”