Ukraine’s Unlikely Fighters

Attacks on cultural heritage are identified as war crimes by the International Criminal Court. The term “heritage” is meant to include both physical and more intangible markers of identity. Some experts have argued that eradicating Ukrainian culture and its resources is one of the goals of the current war. As of May 30, UNESCO has verified damage to over 139 sites, while according to the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab, a collaborative monitoring project by Virginia Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative an overall of 191 sites might have been potentially impacted.

Targeted raids on cultural sites, public and private collections, and even antique shops, continue to be reported by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, most recently in the occupied Kherson region, north of Crimea. As accounted by Konstantin Akinsha, an art historian and curator, the museums in this area are home to over 150,000 artifacts, including gold Scythian jewelry.

UNESCO is collaborating with Ukrainian cultural activists to identify and mark sites that should be protected from accidental and deliberate damage inflicted by the war. The organization assesses satellite images and communicates across the border with heritage workers overlooking Ukrainian resources. According to the Museum Crisis Centre — a grassroots initiative set up by Olga Honchar, director of the Lviv Territory of Terror Museum — the Ukrainian government focuses on preservation of objects over 50 years old and therefore legally considered to be of “cultural value,” leaving the safety of more contemporary initiatives and smaller collections in the hands of their creators and custodians.

Shortly after the February 2022 Russian offensive began, the Kyiv Biennale, an interdisciplinary initiative of international scope, launched the Emergency Support Initiative. Focusing on the occupied and relocated artistic community, this initiative offers financial support and a safe space for displaced artists to live and work. The platform, forging an impressive local and international network including the European Cultural Foundation and ERSTE Stiftung, put into practice the premise of the 2021 edition of the Biennale, which (somewhat prophetically) looked at fostering new international alliances in the face of the growing dangers of authoritarian capitalism.

The TU platform operated in Mariupol until the destruction of the city by Russian forces. Initiated in 2015 after Russia’s aggression on Donetsk, it functioned under the banner “Everything that works for culture, works against war.” Formed by Diana Berg and Konstantin Batozsky, the organization promotes critical thinking in Ukrainian society and fights xenophobia. The siege of Mariupol was directly reported by those who remained on the ground alongside global news agencies. TU team members who managed to escape to Lviv continue to support those who stayed in Mariupol.

Asortymentna Kimnata is an initiative led by curator Anna Potyomkina, who oversees the evacuation of endangered artists, studios and archives. The platform, based in Ivano-Frankivsk in Western Ukraine, has established a network of safe locations where, amid the chaos of a war-torn country, contemporary art can be stored. The Instagram account of this independent institution offers an insight into the physical and logistical effort that goes into saving lives and preserving a lifetime of work during the current war.

on The Carlos Watson Show!

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recognizing the value of citizens’ reporting, encouraged the submission of photographs and testimonies through Diia, an administrative services app. Simultaneously, charitable organization Vostok SOS, working with victims of war since May 2014, makes such reporting public through its regularly-updated Documentation webpage. Natalia Kaplun, a program coordinator at Vostok SOS, previously co-authored a publication called “The City, from Which the War Started,” which gathered testimonies from citizens of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region, occupied by Russian-backed rebels in 2014 and attacked again in 2022.

In April, a group of 13 Ukrainian media, news and human rights organizations submitted a public letter to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, protesting the deletion of imagery and posts that documented Russian war crimes, which they argued could serve as crucial evidence in future trials. The letter also pointed out that many posts glorifying Russian armed forces and including the symbols “Z” and “V” — criminalized in countries such as Latvia — had slipped through the net and remain widely available on Meta platforms.

Yana Kononova and Stanislav Ostrous are two professional photographers who turned their cameras into tools to document Ukraine’s plight. Through their lenses, viewers are confronted with the terror of bodies and buildings shattered by bombs or missiles. Kononova’s black-and-white photos have been broadcast from the Kyiv Biennale Instagram account, together with a statement from the artist, who has accreditation from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence to document war crimes. Ostrous, meanwhile, was previously a conceptual photographer and continues to document the destruction of his hometown Kharkiv while wearing a bulletproof vest.

What would you do to defend your country if it were invaded by a foreign military?

Share your thoughts with us at [email protected].