The tales of museums beneath Russian occupation within the Ukrainian cities of Melitopol and Mariupol encapsulate the grim wartime decisions going through museum staff and their influence on Ukraine’s cultural heritage since Russia invaded on 24 February.
Leila Ibrahimova, director of the Melitopol Museum of Native Historical past, who can be a member of the legislature of the Zaporizhzhia area by which it’s positioned—Ukraine doesn’t acknowledge officers put in by Russia—was briefly kidnapped by Russian forces in March. She instructed the New York Occasions final week from an space not beneath occupation how Russian troops together with a Russian-speaking man in a white lab coat had tried to power a museum staffer by gunpoint to make them the museum’s trove of Scythian gold, which had been hidden for safekeeping. She refused, however they discovered it nonetheless. The curator, recognized by Crimean Tatar activist Eskender Bariiev as Galina Kucher, was launched however then kidnapped once more and has not been seen since.
Galina Kucher, a curator on the Melitopol Museum of Native Historical past who has reportedly not been heard from since she was kidnapped for the second time Photograph by way of Fb
Movies by Russia’s official RIA Novosti information company and on different pro-Russian channels, present a person in a white lab coat, recognized solely as “a senior researcher” and the museum’s new Russian-appointed director, Yevgeny Gorlachev, exhibiting off objects from its assortment and saying they had been saved from earlier administration’s plans to spirit them away to western Ukraine.
Gorlachev stated the works had been discovered “because of the army administration” and museum employees. The“researcher” held what he stated was the Cossack saber of a Soviet colonel who had helped liberate Melitopol from the Nazis, “stolen” from the museum in March by unidentified “scum who definitely wished to promote not solely it however our complete historic heritage”. The upcoming Victory Day vacation on 9 Could, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, has turn out to be sacred beneath Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has claimed as justification for the invasion that Ukraine is run by fascists.
Ibrahimova and Kucher spoke of the Scythian gold assortment with delight when it was exhibited in 2017 and 2021. “For the primary time what was discovered on the territory of Ukraine remained in Ukraine,” stated Ibrahimova of gold artefacts discovered throughout a 1954 archeological dig of burial mounds in Melitopol. “Earlier than that all the pieces was despatched to Moscow or Leningrad.” She described the Melitopol museum’s assortment as “priceless” and stated it was “very securely saved”.
Melitopol’s mayor Ivan Fedorov, who was briefly kidnapped in March and disregards a Russian collaborator put in in his publish, stated in a Fb video that “our native historical past museum is being utterly looted and the historical past of Melitopol is being utterly robbed by the Russian occupiers” and warned that the Scythian gold is “prone to being taken to Crimea”, which is close to Melitopol and was annexed by Russia in 2014.
A Scythian gold bow case relationship from the 4th century BCE that was found close to Melitopol in 1954 Photograph by way of Wikimedia Commons
Petro Andryushchenko, advisor to the pro-Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol (Russia has additionally put in a rival metropolis authorities there following its brutal siege), stated in his Telegram channel final week that “authentic masterpieces” had been “handed over to the occupants” by Natalia Kapustnikova, director of Mariupol’s Museum of Native Historical past. He stated they included authentic works by Arkhip Kuindzhi, an artist of Greek descent born in Mariupol within the nineteenth century who’s one in every of Russia’s most beloved artists. They had been reportedly not on the Kuindzhi Artwork Museum when it was severely broken in March. The Mariupol Metropolis Council stated in a Telegram publish that “over 2,000 distinctive items” had been looted from town’s museums by “ruscists”, a now-common time period combining the phrases Russian and fascist, together with a “Gospel from 1811 created by the Venetian printing home for the Greeks of Mariupol.”
Artworks by Arkhip Kuindzhi stated to have been stolen from the Mariupol Museum of Native Historical past by Russian forces By way of Telegram
Kapustnikova was proven in an Izvestia video report unwrapping Kuindzhi’s Purple Sundown and different works, which she stated had been hidden away then uncovered after battles ended. “We took them out so that they wouldn’t be pilfered additional,” she stated, including that 95% of exhibit objects from the museum had been destroyed after being shot up by Ukrainian forces. Fireplace could possibly be heard as she spoke within the video, which additionally confirmed work from the Kuindzhi Artwork Museum being loaded right into a truck. Fighters from Ukraine’s Azov Battalion stay dug in amid the wreckage of Mariupol’s huge Azovstal metal plant together with tons of of sheltering civilians. The folks’s militia of the separatist pro-Russian Donetsk Folks’s Republic reportedly helped evacuate surviving works that the director of the Donetsk Republican Artwork Museum instructed Russia’s official Tass information company had been introduced there for momentary storage.
Kapustnikova grew to become director of the Mariupol museum in 2017, chosen in a contest run by the Ukrainian authorities. In her speech for the publish she spoke Ukrainian.
