Ukrainian troops entered the strategic metropolis of Kherson on Friday (11 November) to cheers and hugs from native residents. The information comes simply days after studies that Russian occupying forces within the illegally annexed area had engaged in organised mass looting of artwork from the Oleksiy Shovkunenko Kherson Artwork Museum and brought them to Simferopol in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Russia introduced on 9 November that it might retreat from Kherson, each underscoring its dramatic navy setbacks and elevating questions on whether or not it was a feint to lure Ukraine right into a battle.
The Kherson area is one in all 4 territories illegally annexed on 30 September with decrees by Russian President Vladimir Putin, posing a direct threat to museum collections. In October, Russia stole historic statues and the bones of Catherine the Nice’s advisor Prince Grigory Potemkin from Kherson, saying it was evacuating them to security. By declaring martial legislation within the annexed areas final month, Putin has “self-legalised” their looting. Stories have additionally emerged of plans to “evacuate” museum collections in Crimea. Ukraine’s Ministry of Tradition appealed to Unesco to stop Russia’s additional actions, calling them conflict crimes and a “violation of worldwide legislation”.
In a 3 November Fb publish Kherson area’s police wrote that it had “opened legal proceedings [for] kidnapping and elimination by Russian navy into the territory of the aggressor nation […] inventive valuables from the Kherson Artwork Museum”.
The museum wrote in a 4 November Fb publish that from 31 October to three November, “occupying ‘authorities’” introduced as much as 4 dozen individuals into the museum, loaded “all the things their raking palms might attain” into automobiles, artwork was “wrapped in some rag” and “headed to Crimea”, describing these actions as “the kidnapping of 1 Ukraine’s greatest collections”.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed the looting in its day by day report on 8 November. Svitlana Dumynska, the pinnacle of the tradition division of the Kherson Metropolis Council additionally confirmed the museum looting and supply to Simferopol at a briefing in Lviv, in western Ukraine, the place she now lives. She mentioned there’s a comparable state of affairs with Kherson’s native historical past museum, though “we now have a lot much less details about it”.
Detailed studies are prone to emerge within the coming days concerning the scale of the looting and measures by Ukraine to return the collections.
Russian media has itself revealed an excessive amount of the proof. Novaya Gazeta Europe, a Russian opposition newspaper primarily based in Europe, quoted a 75-year-old Kherson resident named Lydia concerning the looting of the artwork museum, which is close to her residence. “For 3 days now, Russian looters have been taking out all of the work,” she mentioned. “They’re loading them into their large vans [Ural army trucks—editor’s note]. With none safety, with none packaging, as in the event that they have been garbage… I cried the entire night after I noticed that.”
Images of stacks of work, allegedly from the Kherson Artwork Museum’s assortment, have circulated in Ukrainian social and information media as have images and movies of vans being loaded in entrance of the Kherson museum constructing. In line with the museum looted works ended up at Simferopol’s Central Museum of Taurida and several other have been recognized as works by the painter and Kherson area native Ivan Pokhytonov, Ukrainian Modernist Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo and Gabriel Gluck of the Transcarpathian College of Portray. Different photos appeared to point out the works being unloaded in Simferopol.
The Moscow Instances, an impartial publication now primarily based in Amsterdam, confirmed the studies with Andrei Malgin, the director of the Taurida museum. “Because of the introduction of martial legislation on the territory of the Kherson area, I’ve been instructed to take the reveals of the Kherson Artwork Museum for short-term storage and guarantee their security till they’re returned to their rightful proprietor,” Malgin instructed the publication on 10 November.
Alina Dotsenko, the longtime director of the Kherson Artwork Museum, left for Kyiv in Might after Russian occupiers requested her to placed on a propaganda exhibition. She instructed Ukraine’s 1+1 media group on 6 November that she had initially managed to persuade occupation officers that the museum assortment, which she says contains invaluable European works, had been moved prematurely of the full-scale renovation of the over 3,000 sq. m museum constructing, which started in late 2021. She additionally erased the stock catalogue from museum computer systems.
Dotsenko mentioned that rogue pro-Russian staffers betrayed the museum. One in every of them, the exhibitions division head Natalya Koltsova, whom Dotsenko says she didn’t belief and had fired a number of years in the past however rehired, allegedly revealed to Russian authorities that the gathering had been taken down for the renovation and saved away within the constructing slightly than evacuated by Ukrainian authorities.
Within the interview, Dotsenko says that Koltsova got here to the museum on 19 July with masked Russian FSB brokers and new safety guards to get into the gathering storage. Marina Zhilina, the museum’s former chief curator, whom Dotsenko fired final 12 months, had copied the gathering database, and was known as in as properly to work with the Russian authorities. Professional-Ukrainian policemen had labored as museum guards till they have been changed by the museum’s Russian-installed collaborationist director, Natalya Desyatova, a former cabaret singer.
“Patriotic residents of Kherson who reside close by” had managed to {photograph} final week’s looting, Dotsenko mentioned, at nice threat since it’s surrounded by roadblocks. Simferopol residents did the identical when the museum cargo from Kherson arrived in Crimea, the place it was taken in “5 large vans”, mentioned Dotsenko. Museum workplace tools was stolen in a faculty bus, she added.
Ukraine’s tradition ministry had contacted her in the beginning of the invasion, however couldn’t present logistics help for evacuation, mentioned Dotsenko. “There was no time to do something,” she mentioned, describing the air raids that she witnessed and Russian occupiers coming into town in early March. “When the ministry proposed packing and evacuating 15,000 works, I requested, ‘What about movers, automobiles, guards?’”
On Friday, the museum’s Fb web page greeted town’s liberation with a picture of a 1993 portray from its assortment by artist Serhiy Sinitsyn within the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine’s flag. “Now all of Kherson is wearing yellow and blue, getting ready to greet the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine],” mentioned the publish. “We’re awaiting the liberators! Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine!”
The ultimate phrases of the museum’s publish regarding Sinitsyn’s portray learn: “The placement of the work is at present unknown.”
