Damage to Kherson Art Museum a ‘Double Crime’, says Ukrainian Minister

Kherson Regional Art Museum, from where museum officials claim more than 10,000 works have been looted since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was last week struck by a drone following a heavy night of bombardment across the country.

According to Ukraine’s State Emergency Services, fires at the museum broke out on the morning of 20 August, but were quickly extinguished with no injuries recorded, although firefighters worked “under the constant threat of repeated attacks”. Museum staff reported extensive damage to the building, including the destruction of its electrical and heating systems. 

In an Instagram post, staff wrote: “Russia has for years targeted what it cannot take away or appropriate—and destroys it. First it looted the collections, now it strikes the walls. Every such strike is a deliberate continuation of the war against our memory.”

According to the post, furniture and flooring were destroyed, books were burned, and the museum has been left without power. Footage shared by emergency services shows firefighters tackling the blaze among rubble, while images shared by the museum reveal charred corridors filled with ash.

Prior to 2022 the Kherson Art Museum held almost 14,000 works of Ukrainian, Russian and European art, ranging from 17th-century pieces to modern items. Museum staff have not reported that any of institution’s remaining objects were damaged in last week’s strike.

Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs, Andrij Sybiha‎, took to social media on 21 August to condemn the previous day’s attack, and to again accuse Russia of removing thousands of works from the museum’s collection during its 2022 annexation of Kherson, as has previously been repeatedly claimed by museum staff.

“What can be appropriated, Russia steals and calls its own. In the case of the Kherson Art Museum—this is a double crime and yet another piece of evidence of how systematic Russia’s policy of destruction is,” he wrote.

Moscow has consistently denied deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, while officials have repeatedly denied that works were looted from the Kherson museum. In March, a statement from the office of the Russia-appointed governor of the Kherson region said the institution’s collection was “safe and sound” at other museums, following an “evacuation” that “protected this priceless heritage from potential damage”.

The attack came in the same week that Ukraine’s parliament granted preliminary approval to a draft bill aimed at “systematically strengthening” the country’s protection of cultural heritage in times of war.

The bill, which must move through a second reading before it can be adopted, would establish the mandatory evacuation of the Museum Fund of Ukraine—the country’s legally protected body of museum objects and collections—and make government authorities and museum founders, among others, responsible for facilitating the evacuation. 

It would also introduce a new legal framework, allowing museum objects to be temporarily stored in government-approved, specially equipped repositories, where they could be restored and conserved.