"They are hacking our history". How to return the collections that Russia has stolen from the Ukrainian museums?

Under a guise of "evacuation," Russia is displacing the museum collections from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, more than 40 museums have been looted. Paintings, icons, archaeological and ethnographic artefacts are reappearing in Russian exhibitions without mentioning of their Ukrainian origin. Ukraine is responding by digitizing its collections, recording losses, and consulting with international experts. However, the accelerated "legalization" of stolen property by the Russians makes the return complicated and requires not only decisions of international courts but also a coordinated cultural diplomacy. How to bring illegally appropriated artefacts back home? And how can the experience gained bythe Germans and Italians help us? Read the investigation by Ukrainian.Media. 

"Usually, I go to work at seven in the morning, it's safer, there's less chance of suddenly being caught in the crosshairs of a killer drone that hunts for passers-by," says Ihor Rusol, deputy director of the Kherson Art Museum, about his working schedule. In fact, he is the only employee, apart from a few security guards, who remained to look after the museum after the city’s de-occupation. The ancient building is located just a few kilometres from the Dnipro River, with Russian troops on the other side, continuing to fire artillery and launching the drones packed with explosives. The museum is surrounded by an iron fence, it has some spacious halls with columns and garbage sitting inside instead of artwork. 

"Before the invasion, we had started major repairs, so it's a mess around here," Rusol explains. "And that hole in the roof was caused by a Russian shell. So due to the repairs when the Russians staged a blitzkrieg, all our exhibits had already been collected and packed in the storage." 

In the darkness, illuminating the way with a flashlight, we are heading to an underground area, where behind the armoured door there are some racks with grates. Now there are only signs with the names and authors of the paintings on them. Where have more than 10,000 paintings disappeared, including works by Mykola Pymonenko (can cost from $70,000), Ivan Aivazovsky (estimated at $250,000), and Peter Lely's portrait "Lady with a dog" (price up to $1 million)? 

Alina Dotsenko, director of the Kherson Regional Museum, where she has worked for over forty years. Dotsenko recalls that in order to protect the museum from the encroachments of the occupation authorities, she was forced to come up with her own cultural salvage plan. 

"I made up a story that I had taken everything out before the repair work started. Where? Well, let them ask me. The staff doesn't know. As if the museum funds had been empty. Thanks to this lie, we had survived for five months. But there were some traitors. One day I got a call and was asked to organize an exhibition for the so-called Victory Day. I said: "There is nothing to exhibit here, I have taken everything out, we are renovating. But they answered me: "Don't lie, old hag! I know that everything is in the museum. We have been informed." I said: "And how dare you talk to me like that, you occupational mug?" - "So you won't be friends with us? Tomorrow morning at the commandant's office we will teach you how to respect the new government!" 

Immediately after these threats, Dotsenko had to secretly leave the city, and the Russians, on the instructions of their collaborators, organized the forced relocation of the Kherson Art Museum's collection. According to eyewitnesses, the building was surrounded by armed gunmen in civilian clothes. The exhibits were first loaded onto some unmarked trucks covered with tarpaulin, and then into yellow school buses. This process lasted several days and was captured on video( Its full version is not available due to the secrecy of the investigation). Residents of the city, risking their own lives, drove around the building and secretly filmed that crime.

Where were the exhibits taken to? The trailers with Kherson valuables were spotted in Crimea, unloaded in the Tavrida Museum in Simferopol. Photographic evidence of the crime was also obtained from there, thanks to the help of the concerned citizens. 

The situation with the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore, which housed more than 50,000 items ranging from Scythian bronze to nineteenth-century icons, is more complicated. In 2022, after the city was seized, the museum building was partially destroyed by direct artillery fire. A significant part of the storage facilities were damaged, the roof collapsed, the windows and parts of the facade were destroyed. The occupation administration did not carry out further restorations, and the remaining artworks were looted. 

How did Ukrainian officials try to save the exhibits? 

"Unfortunately, the museum was not ready for the evacuation because we had no instructions, no resources, no place where to take the exhibits to - everything happened too quickly," said Oleksandr Hora, acting director of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore - "The museum system simply did not have time to react. We had not prepared in advance, because we had no rights to do so without the orders from the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. 

"There was no mechanism of executing a preventive evacuation. In addition, it was technically unrealistic to take out all the paintings; it would have taken some time and a large budget. Personally, I suggested that Mariupol sign an order to organize the exhibition in another city, which could have helped transport the most valuable exhibits," commented Oleksandr Tkachenko, ex- Minister of Culture, responding to the accusations against him. 

Tkachenko recalls how he proposed to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to recognize on a legislative level cultural heritage as an element of national security. The idea was to create some special police units for protecting the cultural sites. Law enforcement officers would have been required to prepare a plan for emergency actions. "I won't describe how my colleagues from the law enforcement committees reacted to this proposal, they just laughed outright. They couldn’t envisage culture and police in their minds as an element of national security! This proposal found almost no response." As a result, with nothing concrete but moral support, the museum workers had to make their own decisions on how to save the museums. 

"We received a letter from the regional department of culture that we had to ensure the storage of the exhibits. They did not specify how exactly this should have been done. I would have been interested to read how this could have been done. Nevertheless, we had a fierce argument with Kapustnikova, a museum employee. As a result, she promised to move the entire collection to the basement," recalls Diana Trima, director of the Department of Restoration and Cultural Reintegration of the De-occupied Territories. However, Natalia Kapustnikova did not fulfil her promise, and evacuated a large part of the paintings... to her own home. 

"Later, I watched a video where Kapustnikova brought the propagandists home and literally took out the works of famous artists that she had saved from the fire. And then she solemnly handed them over to Donetsk and Rostov." 

Among the items stolen from the museum, the most valuable are works by Arkhip Kuindzhi, including "Crimean Landscape" and "Red Sunset" - the estimated value of each of the works may exceed 1 million US dollars. Aivazovsky's Moonlit Night at Sea is estimated at 500-800 thousand dollars. The 17th-century icon of the Virgin Hodegetria has a museum value of more than 200 thousand dollars. 

Search for individual artworks 

In 2023-2025, there were several reports of images of paintings similar to those stolen from the Mariupol museum appearing on illegal dark web platforms and forums specializing in the trade of art of unknown origin. ArtLoss Register analysts submitted to Interpol images of works that are most likely have been stolen, including fragments of Kuindzhi's works, as well as several icons with characteristic damage and completely matching the museum photos. 

"In private chats, I saw dealers offering a landscape from the Kherson Museum, but I'm not sure if it's real, it's most likely a fake," reflects influential Ukrainian gallery owner Yuriy Komielkov. "Although even if it is an original, who among the sane private collectors would want to buy it? It will be difficult to sell such a work without documents. Even if the new owner hangs it tightly at home, it will be photographed very quickly by friends, it will appear on social media, it will be identified, and there will be a big scandal. Who would want that?" However, it turns out that it is quite possible to find some stolen works that have fallen into the hands of "private art lovers." 

Maria Zadorozhna, a specialist in the field of cultural heritage protection, is one of the initiators of the HeMo project. It is a non-governmental initiative that, among other things, collects digital traces of losses, takes inventory and digitizes museum data, and prepares the basis for legal prosecution of those responsible for the destruction of cultural property. The team consists of 20 people and collaborates with historians and archaeologists. "We are translating the museum's inventory books into tables for future requests to Interpol," says Zadorozhna. 

"Of course, the information collected should be disclosed to everyone, but in a careful way. Because there is a risk that some things may disappear even from the black market because the sellers will get scared."