Identification Continues: Kherson Art Museum of Ukraine Recognises Five More Paintings Stolen by Russia During Occupation

Employees of the Kherson Art Museum in Ukraine have identified five more works of art stolen by the Russians: etchings by artist Yuriy Didenko, created in 1987 on the theme of Ukrainian folklore.

This was reported by the Kherson Art Museum on its social media page on 22 July. 

The inventory numbers of the works were captured in a photo taken by Russian propagandists on 1 April 2023 at the Central Museum of Tavryda during the signing of a fake agreement on the storage of stolen property in Crimea, the post says.

Illustrator Yurii Didenko based his works on Ukrainian folklore and traditional beliefs. In particular, such stories are included in the artist's cycle ‘Stories about Ukrainian devils’. Among the works stolen by the Russians, three etchings from this cycle were identified: ‘The Witch’, “The Mittened Cat” and “Delirium”, as well as “Visitation” and “Night of Ivan Kupala”, the statement said.

Currently, there are 120 identified works of art that were taken by the Russian military from the Kherson Art Museum during their escape from the city. The exact location of one of the works has not been established, while the other 119 are in the Simferopol Central Museum of Tavryda in the temporarily occupied Crimea.

Employees of the Kherson Art Museum keep a public list of previously identified paintings stolen by the Russian military during the occupation. The entire list is available on the museum's website and social media pages. 

From 31 October to 4 November 2022, the Kherson Art Museum was looted by the Russian occupiers. More than 11,000 of the most valuable pieces of art were stolen out of the nearly 14,000 works of art in the museum's collection before the full-scale invasion.

The looting, disguised as an ‘evacuation’, took place under the slogan of ‘preserving cultural property’ and was accompanied by plain-clothes men armed with machine guns. The cargo was sent to the Crimea, and the works (all or part of them) ended up in the Central Museum of Tavryda in Simferopol. It is unknown whether everything is still there. There are risks of transporting the stolen collection to Russia and the possibility of theft of the works during their illegal transportation to private collectors.

On 30 November 2022, the museum building, an architectural monument and Kherson's business card, came under fire, with more than 100 square metres of windows smashed, and the facade damaged by an enemy shell. The second time the Russians shelled the museum was on 10 April 2023.

These facts have attracted the attention of not only the Ukrainian but also the international community and are widely publicised as one of Russia's numerous crimes against Ukraine's cultural heritage.