When Russian president Vladimir Putin declared martial regulation within the annexed Ukrainian territories on 19 October, he additionally explicitly “legalised” the looting of the nation’s cultural heritage within the identify of “preservation”.
In line with the Ukrainian press, the Russians are presently eradicating artefacts from the museums in Kherson, the town in southern Ukraine conquered on 2 March, however secret elimination of essentially the most invaluable museum objects had already began in Might when the Russian military confronted a attainable Ukrainian counterattack.
Looting has not been restricted to the Shovkunenko Regional Artwork Museum, with its assortment of Ukrainian and Russian high quality and ornamental arts, and the Kherson Regional Museum, which tells the story of the area from historic occasions via its materials tradition. The occupiers have additionally dismantled and eliminated Soviet-era monuments to the Russian imperial heroes Common Aleksandr Suvorov and Admiral Fyodor Ushakov, whereas the destiny of the monument to Prince Grigory Potemkin, lover of Empress Catherine the Nice, has been extra sophisticated. Erected in 1823, it was exiled in 1917 to the courtyard of the Regional Historical past Museum after which disappeared completely through the Second World Warfare. The monument that has now been dismantled by the Russians is a reproduction produced in 2003. Not simply the statue has been eliminated: the prince’s mummified stays within the Cathedral of St Catherine have been exhumed and brought to an unknown location.
Ukraine’s not too long ago occupied territories will possible not be the one targets of Russian “evacuation”. One other decree signed by Putin on the identical day because the declaration of martial regulation introduced the introduction of “particular measures” within the Russian areas of Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov on the border of Ukraine, and in Crimea, annexed in 2014.
The Russian plan to “evacuate” the Crimean museums turned identified earlier than the publication of Putin’s decrees of 19 October. On 15 October, the Ukrainian ministry of Tradition declared that eradicating essentially the most invaluable objects from the museums of Crimea and different occupied territories was in blatant violation of the Hague Conference for the Safety of Cultural Property within the Occasion of Armed Battle. The ministry urgently contacted Unesco, asking it to forestall one other violation of worldwide regulation by the aggressor, however it’s unlikely that the Russian forces will adjust to any worldwide calls to desist. In Putin’s view, each Crimea and the Ukrainian areas annexed on 30 September are Russian territories regulated by native laws, not worldwide treaties.
Crimean precedent
Two exhibitions from Crimea have turn out to be symbols of the 2014 annexation of the peninsula. One has by no means returned to Crimea; the opposite by no means left it.
The present Crimea: Gold and Secrets and techniques of the Black Sea, which opened on the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam shortly earlier than the annexation in March 2014, ended with a judgment within the Netherlandish courts that the objects from Crimean museums must be returned to the Ukrainian state regardless of the Russians laying declare to them.
If that case attracted worldwide consideration, the destiny of the exhibition that by no means left the peninsula stays obscure. In 2008, the curators of the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen, Germany, situated 74 work within the Simferopol Artwork Museum in Crimea that had been taken from Aachen by the Purple Military after the Second World Warfare.
Peter van der Brink, the director of the German museum, spent 5 years negotiating for these work with Ukrainian officers. He supplied to donate 5 of them to the Simferopol Museum, requested for 5 canvases of native significance to Aachen to be returned to the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, and agreed to present the remaining artistic endeavors on mortgage for 50 years. In late spring 2014, 20 of the work from the Simferopol Artwork Museum have been attributable to be exhibited within the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum after which toured round Germany, however the deliberate exhibition by no means passed off. After the annexation of Crimea later that yr, the work got here below the management of the Russian Federation. Their destiny stays to be seen.
Ukrainian army intelligence has reported that the Russian evacuation plan contains each the elimination of museum objects to storage inside Crimea and the “evacuation” of essentially the most invaluable works to the territory of the Russian Federation. In line with the Ukrainian ministry of tradition, Russians plan to remove all archaeological objects product of valuable steel, through which the collections of the peninsula are wealthy. Among the many most essential are the State Museum-Protect of Tauric Chersonesos, web site of the Hellenistic metropolis close to Sebastopol and the Kerch Archaeological and Historic Museum with its assortment of historic gold jewelry and cash.
It’s unlikely that archaeological objects would be the solely goal of the Russian forces’ deliberate evacuation. Crimea has essential artwork museums, such because the Kroshytsky Artwork Museum in Sebastopol with its assortment of Russian portray and works by Dutch, Flemish and Italian Previous Masters, whereas the Aivazovsky Image Gallery in Feodosia is internationally identified for the oeuvre of the eponymous Nineteenth-century marine painter.
What’s going to occur to such Ukrainian treasures after evacuation to Russia stays unclear. The parallel with Nazi Germany’s elimination of museum collections for “safety” functions is startling, with the peculiar “legalistic” decorum of the evacuation so just like the strategy of Third Reich officers who hid their theft below the fig leaf of urgently adopted “authorized rules”.
