In Kherson, in the south of Ukraine, the bombardments have not ceased since the withdrawal of the Russian army last November. And, before leaving, the Russians took great care to completely empty the city museum of its precious pieces: Scythian gold, Russian imperial medals and coins, paintings, furniture or even military uniforms from Soviet times.
These objects would have been relocated in Crimea occupied by the Russian army, where the Ukrainians have little hope of recovering them, at least in the short term, according to the various speakers who took part in a recent round table on the subject.
A year after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war has taken a cultural turn. On February 15, UNESCO listed 241 cultural sites that had been damaged in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture for its part had around 500, estimated the Ukrainian Dmytro Koval, expert in international law relating to cultural heritage, on February 2, during the round table organized by the think tank Public International Law&Policy Group (PILPG), based in Washington. All reflected on the notion of destruction and looting of cultural property as major violations of humanitarian law that could constitute war crimes.
The list of destroyed cultural property drawn up by UNESCO includes religious sites, museums, monuments and places where cultural life is found, such as libraries. In particular, they were identified by satellite, with the expertise of UNOSAT.
Moreover, UNESCO accepted, on January 25, the request of the government of Ukraine to name the city of Odessa, where a lot of damage was recorded, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Listed as a site in danger, the city will thus benefit from the “highest protection”, “which will make it possible to trigger funds more quickly”, indicated the spokespersons for UNESCO.
The cultural future
In terms of intangible heritage, Ukrainian borscht, at the center of several festivals and cultural events in the country, has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Because, beyond buildings and cultural objects, intangible culture is also part of the heritage protected by international law, as mentioned by Kristin Hausler, Director of the Center for International Law, during the round table organized by the PILPG. Intangible cultural heritage, she says, is what we want to preserve for the future, “what we want to pass on to our children”.
Language is the vehicle of intangible culture.
“Language is the vehicle of intangible culture,” continued Dmytro Koval. “Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2014, and it has been intensifying since 2022, media and newspapers and similar institutions have been Russified. There are practices of changing the names of sites and institutions to associate them with Russian culture. This phenomenon is also observed in schools,” he says, where curricula are modified to serve the Russian language and culture.
The role of UNESCO is not, however, to establish who is responsible for these rampages, explains a spokesman for UNESCO. “It is not our role to establish who did the damage or how it was done,” he continues, adding that “reconstruction” and “emergency measures” are UNESCO’s priorities. It will be up to “international justice”, he says, to start trials, which can go as far as trials for war crimes. International law indeed protects civilians, schools and places of culture, mentioned Audrey Azoulay, the director general of UNESCO in her report delivered in February.
For Dmytro Koval, moreover, the process of restitution of Ukrainian works looted during the war will be different from that observed in Syria or Iraq, where antiquities stolen by combatants were sold immediately, in particular to buy weapons. Currently, he says, the works are taken by the Russian state to be relocated to Russian museums. We will have to wait for a Russian government to recognize its wrongdoings and make restitution, which is unlikely to happen under the current regime of Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine derussifies
At the same time, observers noted the operations of “derussification of Ukraine”, in the wake of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. “The growing sense of Ukrainian nationality and identity, heightened by what is happening to them, risks becoming less inclusive and more hateful towards Russians. How could it be otherwise? wrote columnist Jamie Dettmer in POLITICO Europe last August. Already, last December, the statue of Empress Catherine II, “Empress of all the Russias”, was unbolted in Odessa.
“Decommunization began in the 1990s with the renaming of certain streets, said last week to France 24 Iryna Biriukova, director of the national scientific library of Odessa. We are a city that has a multicultural past, but which is covered with ideological markers linked to Russia. Odessa was built by French, Germans, Jews, Greeks, Italians, Moldavians and dozens of other nationalities, and this memory is underrepresented. Russian imperial culture is largely overrepresented. We have to find a balance, that’s what has to change.