Unesco has published a list of 343 cultural sites verified to have suffered damage since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
The list includes 31 museums, along with 127 religious sites, 151 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 19 monuments, 14 libraries and one archive.
The list has grown by nearly 100 since Unesco published a previous assessment in spring last year.
The damage is worse in regions that have seen the heaviest fighting; the Donetsk region, on the frontline of the war, has suffered the most damage to its cultural sites, with 88 listed, following by the Kharkiv region with 56 and the Odesa region with 49.
The country’s capital Kyiv and its surrounding region have also suffered significant damage, with 39 sites listed, as has the Luhansk region, with 34 sites listed.
Among the museums and galleries on the list are the Memorial House-Museum and Estate of Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi in the Chernihiv region, the Ivankiv Museum and the Kyiv Art Gallery in the Kyiv region, as well as Kharkiv Art Museum and Odesa’s art, maritime, archaeological and literary museums.
The list does not detail the extent of damage to each site; media reports indicate that many have suffered extensive damage, such as Odesa Fine Arts Museum, which was hit by a missile strike last November, while a number have been completely destroyed.
Unesco carries out preliminary damage assessment for cultural properties by cross-checking reported incidents with multiple credible sources. The international body says it is also working with partners organisations to develop a mechanism for “independent coordinated assessment of data in Ukraine, including satellite image analysis”.
The cost of rebuilding Ukraine’s culture and tourism sectors is estimated at $9bn, up from a projected $6bn last year. Unesco has pledged $10m towards the eventual rehabilitation of the country’s cultural sector.
You can read more in an article written by Geraldine Kendall Adams and published in the museumsassociation.org web site at: https://tinyurl.com/mwv8fpt6.