Ukraine Evacuates 670,000 Artifacts Amid Ongoing War
During the full-scale war, Ukraine has already evacuated 670,000 museum exhibits and recorded about 1,500 damaged cultural heritage sites.
The Gaze reports on it, referring to Ukrinform.
During a working trip to Zaporizhzhia, Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy and Minister of Culture Tetiana Berezhna said that since the start of the full-scale invasion, 670,000 exhibits have been evacuated from Ukrainian museums.
This year alone, about 100,000 items have been removed, mainly from frontline regions. According to Berezhna, the evacuation process is constantly being updated to reflect changes in the security situation, and museum institutions are demonstrating responsibility by saving the most valuable artifacts.
At the same time, Ukraine is recording large-scale destruction. About 1,500 cultural heritage sites have been damaged across the country, 146 of them in the Zaporizhzhia region. All cases are being documented, and the state is already working with international partners on plans to restore the most damaged monuments.
During her participation in the All-Ukrainian conference “Antidote: Culture and Art in Frontline Regions,” Berezhna emphasized the importance of dialogue with the cultural community when making decisions. The discussion focused on heritage preservation, the status of relocated institutions, staffing needs in the sector, and updating professional classifications.
The minister stressed the need to balance heritage preservation and nationwide reconstruction during wartime, as culture is the foundation without which the country's recovery is impossible.
Special attention is paid not only to the physical evacuation of exhibits, but also to the preservation of documentation, digital archives, and human capital in the field of culture.
For example, Ukraine has already digitized the 1804 Ostroh Quran, a unique manuscript by Tatar scribe Ibn Adam Ali Mustafa, preserving a key part of Volhynian Tatar cultural heritage that blends Islamic tradition with Ukrainian linguistic elements.
Russian forces have systematically looted Ukrainian cultural heritage, targeting museums and galleries to erase national identity and justify their occupation.
Ukrainian intelligence reported that over 1,200 artworks, including works by Maria Prymachenko, Ivan Aivazovsky, and other Ukrainian and European artists, were stolen from the Kherson Regional Art Gallery, with some items illegally moved to temporarily occupied Crimea.
Another investigation revealed that Russia’s two main state museums hold over 110,000 Ukrainian cultural artifacts, many taken before 1991 but some as recently as the 2000s. This long-term transfer, from the Russian Empire through the Soviet era, served both material and political purposes, reinforcing Russia’s narrative of historical continuity from Kyivan Rus. Notable treasures like the Pereshchepyna hoard and Kul-Oba artifacts remain in Russian collections, often with obscured provenance to hide their Ukrainian origins.
As The Gaze reported earlier, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) of Ukraine, Russian occupiers have stolen 178 cultural artifacts from temporarily occupied territories, with many taken from Crimea. These include items illegally excavated from archaeological sites such as Chersonesos Taurica, the Kadykivsky settlement, and the Byzantine “Church of John the Baptist.”
Read more on The Gaze: Ukrainian Art & Culture at Risk: Frontline Evacuations and Preservation Efforts