Russia’s war on Ukraine risks ‘cultural genocide,’ experts warn

Two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the Ukrainian city of Kherson one of “four new regions of Russia,” satellite photographs captured two Russian trucks hauling away roughly 10,000 artifacts from the Kherson Regional Art Museum.

While Putin may have said he was taking what was his, Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar and ambassador-at-large Richard Kurin called it a “war crime.” This act, he claimed during a panel on “Protecting Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones,” is part of a larger campaign to erase Ukrainian culture.

Kurin added that nearly 1,700 other instances of likely damage to museums, archives and libraries have been reported.

“Particularly in Ukraine, culture and identity and history is being targeted,” Kurin said during the event, which was part of the 2023 Meridian Culturefix Conversations. “This is not collateral damage.”

Moderator Deborah Lehr, the CEO and managing partner of Edelman Global Advisory, added that such forms of cultural genocide are often employed in conflict. 

Kurin shared one example from when he was recently in Iraq assisting in the rehabilitation of the Mosul Museum, which had previously been a target of ISIS. 

“The obliteration of history and culture, the denial of people’s identity, it has gone on through history. It’s not something new, but the technology of doing it is,” Kurin said. “We’ve spent many years already trying to put back together what ISIS blew up in a few seconds for a few hundred dollars.”

“In Ukraine… a missile, a bomb causes so much destruction [that] it’s going to take years and years and billions of dollars to pick up,” he added.

While their Ukrainian “cultural colleagues” have begun the work of restoration and storing cultural artifacts that could be targeted, First Secretary of the Embassy of Ukraine to the U.S. Kateryna Smagliy spoke on the importance of international collaboration in rebuilding Ukrainian heritage, without which she doesn’t believe they will succeed.

Such rebuilding, she said, starts with understanding the history of Ukrainian culture.

“As of today, we still see a lack of expertise in American universities and all over the world because for many years, the nation of 40 million people was considered insignificant, not important and not deserving a place in galleries, museums and public venues,” Smagliy said.

“Fortunately — if there is anything good that came out of Putin’s actions — Ukraine is finally on the map,” she added.

Though the conflict really began in 2014, Kurin said, this renewed attention has resulted in international support from both the private and public sector, who have provided money, training and ideas on how to preserve Ukrainian culture. It will continue to take a village, he said, to fight that fight.

He then compared the task at hand with the rebuilding of Mostar Bridge, which the former Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova said was destroyed during the Bosnian War to symbolize that there could not be understanding between the two sides.

“That bridge connected communities that were then at war and to build that bridge was not only building bricks and mortar, it was building community and the social fabric,” Kurin said. “That’s the thing that’s in front of us.”

“It’s not just the destruction, it’s how do we build back after that?” he continued. “That’s the challenge.”