Ukraine accuses Russia of looting thousands of artworks from museums in occupied regions

Russian art curators have launched raids to loot and plunder nearly 30 Ukrainian museums since its invasion last February, according to the Sunday Times, London. Valuable ancient artifacts including the famous Scythian artifacts, ornaments, sculptures, and icons worth millions have been stolen from the war-torn country, the paper is claiming. Most of the artwork missing was the ones that were assembled by the Eastern Iranian nomadic people after they migrated from Central Asia to modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia between the 7th and 3rd century BC. 

“These orders are coming from someone pretty high up in the Kremlin,” Sir Antony Beevor, the historian and author of Russia: Revolution and Civil War told the Sunday Times paper. “Putin’s propaganda is that Ukraine as a country doesn’t exist, it’s part of Russia — so they can grab anything they want," he added. 

Such raids are done in order to erase Ukraine’s cultural identity, some officials have claimed. A museum caretaker, Leila Ibrahimova, was kidnapped shortly after the Russian invasion in March, and since then, thousands of pieces of artwork have been stolen. These thefts are particularly more prominent in occupied Mariupol and Melitopol.

Torah scroll was among the objects looted from museums in Mariupol. Credit: AP/Museums Association

“It’s a deliberate policy to destroy the historical memory of the Ukrainian people,” Alexsandr Symonenko, a Ukrainian archaeologist and Scythian specialist at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, told Sunday Times. Russians have plundered nearly 200 items from the Museum of Local Lore in Melitopol. The museum holds “one of the largest and most expensive collections in Ukraine", said Melitopol’s mayor Ivan Fyodorov. A 2,300-year-old gold piece from the Scythian empire is also missing, according to the Museums Association.

Credit: AP

'Ruscists looted more than 2000 exhibits': Ukraine 

Thousands of objects have been looted from museums, says the latter in a published report. Some of the artifacts were carefully selected by a man in a white coat with “long tweezers and special gloves," who was accompanied by Russian soldiers, the Museums Association noted. Items relating to Ukraine's historical and cultural heritage in the besieged city of Mariupol have been stolen by the "occupiers", the city council said in a statement on Telegram.

Using the term “ruscists” – a Ukrainian slang coined to describe Russians and fascists, the council said that invading forces have looted “more than 2,000 unique exhibits from the museums of Mariupol” and brought them to Donetsk. This included the 19th-century artists Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ivan Aivazovsky, a handwritten Torah scroll, a gospel from 1811 created by a Venetian printing house for the Greeks of Mariupol, and more than 200 medals from the Museum of Medallion Art Harabet. The looting is deliberate, Ukraine alleged, adding that the largest heist has taken place in Kherson Regional Art Museum. Russians stole 5,000 pieces of artwork, according to the council.