"They are hacking our history". How to return the collections that Russia has stolen from the Ukrainian museums? 

Under a guise of "evacuation," Russia is displacing the museum collections from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, more than 40 museums have been looted. Paintings, icons, archaeological and ethnographic artefacts are reappearing in Russian exhibitions without mentioning of their Ukrainian origin. Ukraine is responding by digitizing its collections, recording losses, and consulting with international experts. However, the accelerated "legalization" of stolen property by the Russians makes the return complicated and requires not only decisions of international courts but also a coordinated cultural diplomacy. How to bring illegally appropriated artefacts back home? And how can the experience gained bythe Germans and Italians help us? Read the investigation by Ukrainian.Media. 

"Usually, I go to work at seven in the morning, it's safer, there's less chance of suddenly being caught in the crosshairs of a killer drone that hunts for passers-by," says Ihor Rusol, deputy director of the Kherson Art Museum, about his working schedule. In fact, he is the only employee, apart from a few security guards, who remained to look after the museum after the city’s de-occupation. The ancient building is located just a few kilometres from the Dnipro River, with Russian troops on the other side, continuing to fire artillery and launching the drones packed with explosives. The museum is surrounded by an iron fence, it has some spacious halls with columns and garbage sitting inside instead of artwork. 

"Before the invasion, we had started major repairs, so it's a mess around here," Rusol explains. "And that hole in the roof was caused by a Russian shell. So due to the repairs when the Russians staged a blitzkrieg, all our exhibits had already been collected and packed in the storage." 

In the darkness, illuminating the way with a flashlight, we are heading to an underground area, where behind the armoured door there are some racks with grates. Now there are only signs with the names and authors of the paintings on them. Where have more than 10,000 paintings disappeared, including works by Mykola Pymonenko (can cost from $70,000), Ivan Aivazovsky (estimated at $250,000), and Peter Lely's portrait "Lady with a dog" (price up to $1 million)? 

Alina Dotsenko, director of the Kherson Regional Museum, where she has worked for over forty years. Dotsenko recalls that in order to protect the museum from the encroachments of the occupation authorities, she was forced to come up with her own cultural salvage plan. 

"I made up a story that I had taken everything out before the repair work started. Where? Well, let them ask me. The staff doesn't know. As if the museum funds had been empty. Thanks to this lie, we had survived for five months. But there were some traitors. One day I got a call and was asked to organize an exhibition for the so-called Victory Day. I said: "There is nothing to exhibit here, I have taken everything out, we are renovating. But they answered me: "Don't lie, old hag! I know that everything is in the museum. We have been informed." I said: "And how dare you talk to me like that, you occupational mug?" - "So you won't be friends with us? Tomorrow morning at the commandant's office we will teach you how to respect the new government!" 

Immediately after these threats, Dotsenko had to secretly leave the city, and the Russians, on the instructions of their collaborators, organized the forced relocation of the Kherson Art Museum's collection. According to eyewitnesses, the building was surrounded by armed gunmen in civilian clothes. The exhibits were first loaded onto some unmarked trucks covered with tarpaulin, and then into yellow school buses. This process lasted several days and was captured on video( Its full version is not available due to the secrecy of the investigation). Residents of the city, risking their own lives, drove around the building and secretly filmed that crime.

Where were the exhibits taken to? The trailers with Kherson valuables were spotted in Crimea, unloaded in the Tavrida Museum in Simferopol. Photographic evidence of the crime was also obtained from there, thanks to the help of the concerned citizens. 

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The situation with the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore, which housed more than 50,000 items ranging from Scythian bronze to nineteenth-century icons, is more complicated. In 2022, after the city was seized, the museum building was partially destroyed by direct artillery fire. A significant part of the storage facilities were damaged, the roof collapsed, the windows and parts of the facade were destroyed. The occupation administration did not carry out further restorations, and the remaining artworks were looted. 

How did Ukrainian officials try to save the exhibits? 

"Unfortunately, the museum was not ready for the evacuation because we had no instructions, no resources, no place where to take the exhibits to - everything happened too quickly," said Oleksandr Hora, acting director of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore - "The museum system simply did not have time to react. We had not prepared in advance, because we had no rights to do so without the orders from the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. 

"There was no mechanism of executing a preventive evacuation. In addition, it was technically unrealistic to take out all the paintings; it would have taken some time and a large budget. Personally, I suggested that Mariupol sign an order to organize the exhibition in another city, which could have helped transport the most valuable exhibits," commented Oleksandr Tkachenko, ex- Minister of Culture, responding to the accusations against him. 

Tkachenko recalls how he proposed to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to recognize on a legislative level cultural heritage as an element of national security. The idea was to create some special police units for protecting the cultural sites. Law enforcement officers would have been required to prepare a plan for emergency actions. "I won't describe how my colleagues from the law enforcement committees reacted to this proposal, they just laughed outright. They couldn’t envisage culture and police in their minds as an element of national security! This proposal found almost no response." As a result, with nothing concrete but moral support, the museum workers had to make their own decisions on how to save the museums. 

"We received a letter from the regional department of culture that we had to ensure the storage of the exhibits. They did not specify how exactly this should have been done. I would have been interested to read how this could have been done. Nevertheless, we had a fierce argument with Kapustnikova, a museum employee. As a result, she promised to move the entire collection to the basement," recalls Diana Trima, director of the Department of Restoration and Cultural Reintegration of the De-occupied Territories. However, Natalia Kapustnikova did not fulfil her promise, and evacuated a large part of the paintings... to her own home. 

"Later, I watched a video where Kapustnikova brought the propagandists home and literally took out the works of famous artists that she had saved from the fire. And then she solemnly handed them over to Donetsk and Rostov." 

Among the items stolen from the museum, the most valuable are works by Arkhip Kuindzhi, including "Crimean Landscape" and "Red Sunset" - the estimated value of each of the works may exceed 1 million US dollars. Aivazovsky's Moonlit Night at Sea is estimated at 500-800 thousand dollars. The 17th-century icon of the Virgin Hodegetria has a museum value of more than 200 thousand dollars. 

Search for individual artworks 

In 2023-2025, there were several reports of images of paintings similar to those stolen from the Mariupol museum appearing on illegal dark web platforms and forums specializing in the trade of art of unknown origin. ArtLoss Register analysts submitted to Interpol images of works that are most likely have been stolen, including fragments of Kuindzhi's works, as well as several icons with characteristic damage and completely matching the museum photos. 

"In private chats, I saw dealers offering a landscape from the Kherson Museum, but I'm not sure if it's real, it's most likely a fake," reflects influential Ukrainian gallery owner Yuriy Komielkov. "Although even if it is an original, who among the sane private collectors would want to buy it? It will be difficult to sell such a work without documents. Even if the new owner hangs it tightly at home, it will be photographed very quickly by friends, it will appear on social media, it will be identified, and there will be a big scandal. Who would want that?" However, it turns out that it is quite possible to find some stolen works that have fallen into the hands of "private art lovers." 

Maria Zadorozhna, a specialist in the field of cultural heritage protection, is one of the initiators of the HeMo project. It is a non-governmental initiative that, among other things, collects digital traces of losses, takes inventory and digitizes museum data, and prepares the basis for legal prosecution of those responsible for the destruction of cultural property. The team consists of 20 people and collaborates with historians and archaeologists. "We are translating the museum's inventory books into tables for future requests to Interpol," says Zadorozhna. 

"Of course, the information collected should be disclosed to everyone, but in a careful way. Because there is a risk that some things may disappear even from the black market because the sellers will get scared."

 Zadorozhna says that researchers she knows saw the amphora, which was probably stolen from the Mariupol Museum, on the Ukrainian marketplace OLX. The ad states that the archaeological find is undamaged, was on a sunken ship, and is dated to the 5th-6th century AD. The ad was posted on the platform in April 2022, a month after the occupation of Mariupol. Now the ad is not active. But we managed to recover the sender's data and phone number. Unfortunately, the number turned out to be inactive. We tried to find other similar products on popular e-marketplaces. Sellers offer antique amphorae for about a thousand dollars. When asked about the origin of the goods, they answer that they received them as a gift from friends or say that the offer is no longer relevant. 

Ukraine is not a unique example of the illegal sale of archaeological finds. The same problems they have had recently in the Middle East - during the military conflicts, museums were looted on a massive scale and antiquities were sold unofficially. 

"In the Middle East, these goods were mostly transported to Europe and America by Turkish mafia groups. When there was massive looting of valuables in Iraq and Syria, we published red lists with examples of very typical archaeological and antique objects. Customs officers are not experts in art, and they have to rely on something as to at least recognize a suspicious object. It is important that Ukrainian databases with stolen valuables appear at the borders. This is more true for some precious metal items. In the case of Ukraine, we are talking about jewellery, Scythian gold, and icons," said Professor Hermann Partzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. 

According to UNESCO, the global shadow art market is worth up to two billion dollars a year. How do you avoid getting bogged down in so many illegal art goods when you're looking for the stolen national treasures? 

The newest program S.W.O.A.D.S. (Stolen Works Of Art Detection System) is a development of the Italian Carabinieri Command that allows searching the Internet, social networks, online auctions and dark net for images and descriptions of stolen artworks. Its algorithms are trained on the basis of more than 1.3 million objects from the Italian national archive. The program has a potential for international application and is currently being discussed with some partners from the EU countries, as well as with the representatives from Ukraine. Due to the full-scale war in Ukraine and the risk of illegal export of cultural property, S.W.O.A.D.S. is being considered as one of the tools for monitoring potentially stolen Ukrainian artefacts that may appear on the black market in Europe. 

Paolo Befera, commander of the Carabinieri's cultural heritage operations unit, proudly demonstrates the program in action at his office in Rome. A blurry black-and-white fragment of a painting depicting an angel appears on a large monitor. In a few seconds, the artificial intelligence puts together a whole canvas from this piece of the puzzle, with Jesus painted on it, and the angel as just a small detail at his feet. 

Befera takes us through several floors of the Kulur Carabinieri headquarters. One level is reserved for training new specialists. Here are samples of paintings- fakes: most often they copy Picasso and Warhol, because the artists had often created several versions of their own works during their lifetime, so it is easier to pass off a fake as an original. There is a separate box with fake-stamped signatures. 

"And this is a real Caravaggio," Befera smiles, pointing to a huge painting based on a biblical story, "This painting was stolen from a church, unfortunately, such cases are not uncommon in Italy. Traditionally, precious icons or works on religious themes are kept in churches where they are not guarded well enough." 

The Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale was established in 1969. It is the world's first specialized police force dedicated exclusively to protection of cultural property. It is subordinate to the Italian Ministry of Culture and is part of the specialized units of the Carabinieri Army. There is a separate Blue Helmets unit that operates during natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, fires, and war. 

"We don't go into details about the punishment for those who steal artworks, it's not our responsibility. The main thing is that our exhibits are brought back home. It is important to find the exhibits, no matter how much they cost. It is not museum jewellery that is being stolen, but our history," explains Paolo Befera. For more than 55 years of activity, the unit has returned more than 3 million stolen works of art and archaeological artefacts to the Italians. Instead of answering the question of how many Italian cultural treasures have been found recently, Paolo Befera points at the hundreds of packages in a separate transparent room in his office. "It's all from America!" 

What are the success cases of the Ukrainians in the search for artefacts? 

Two years ago, some ancient objects were returned to Ukraine from the United States: akinakis of the Scythian culture of the 6th to 5th centuries BC, a flint axe dated to the 3rd millennium BC, and Polovtsian sabers from the time of the ancient Russian state. American customs officers detained these items in a parcel sent from Russia. The description of the package's contents stated that it was agricultural tools. Of course, this was not entirely true, and it attracted the attention of border guards who were not familiar with art. The items were handed over solemnly, in the presence of ministers.

How is the big comeback coming? 

Vasyl Yatsynyn used to work on murder and rape cases, but last year he became the head of a newly created department of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine that deals with crimes related to the theft of the cultural property in times of war. Yatsynin asks his assistant to demonstrate the results of his work. The latter takes out a thick folder with materials certified by the prosecutor's office and sample cards. The department has only 6 employees who managed to document 4000 artefacts in Ukrainian and 400 in English. The cost of the ten most expensive stolen artefacts is estimated at 7 million hryvnias. The English-language cards have been handed over to Interpol.

"It's quite difficult to prepare cards in English for Interpol," explains Yatsynin, "They have their own requirements for design, photos of stolen works must be of good quality, and we often don't have them, because previously the databases often described them only in writing. Interpol has accepted our cards, but has not yet started the process of adding them to their system. We have not received a response yet, their bureaucracy is quite bad, and the amount of information we are documenting and submitting will be a challenge for them." 

Meanwhile, the Russians are not resting either, but are introducing Ukrainian values into their own federal base. Why are they diligently creating an alternative reality? 

"Of course, they will present this as an argument to the international community and turn everything upside down, saying that it was Ukrainians who had stolen their cultural property, not vice versa. They have their own logic: if the artist is Soviet, then he is Russian; if the excavations were carried out by a Soviet archaeologist, everything he found is automatically Russian property. I do not rule out that some criminal cases will be lodged in Russia against the Ukrainian museum workers and their investigators will be trying to discredit them internationally. Therefore, our task is to publicize the much information about the stolen property as possible. This will be an obstacle and a factor in counteracting the threats that may further arise with the distribution and movement of the stolen museum fund of Ukraine," Yatsynin concludes.

 It seems that the spread has already begun, but so far only in Central Asia. In April 2025, the State Museum of History of Uzbekistan in Tashkent opened an exhibition entitled "The Heritage of the Black Sea Region," organized with the participation of the Russian Ministry of Culture and the State Hermitage Museum. Among the exhibits were the copies and, probably, the originals of Scythian gold, which in shape, weight and decoration details coincide with the collection stolen from the Melitopol Museum of Local Lore. There was no mention of Ukraine in the accompanying texts of the exhibition. The museum's official website just mentioned  that "the exhibits were provided by Russian regional partners from the south of the Russian Federation." Ukraine appealed to UNESCO to investigate the situation. Cases of exhibiting paintings allegedly stolen by Russians from Ukrainian museums have also occurred in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and China.

In addition, the Russian museum octopus continues operating in Europe. 

"The activities of Russian museums abroad are very closely directed by the Foreign Intelligence Service and its director, Comrade Naryshkin, personally. Therefore, any activity of a Russian museum abroad is actually a part of an operation conducted by their intelligence. It is important that our foreign colleagues understand this," warns Oleksiy Kopytko, a military analyst and co-founder of the Ukrainian Center for Museum Development. 

In an attempt to legitimize the theft in the eyes of the world, the Russian Federation is manipulating the Hague Convention. The fact is that international law has a concept of effective control over the occupied territory. That is, if a country has seized a city, it is responsible for preserving its cultural values. The Russians justify their theft by saying that it is a way to protect museum values. But this is an outright manipulation, says international law experts. In fact, Russia has not signed the second protocol of the Hague Convention, which deals with enhanced protection of cultural property. This means that Russia legally avoids enhanced obligations and liability for the looting of cultural property. 

"In order to protect it, it is not necessary to officially make the items Russian property. And this is exactly what the Russians are actively doing by including our artworks in their catalogues. If they really wanted to preserve the collections, they could have transferred them to third neutral countries for storage during the war. It is clear that they will not do this," says Taras Smekiv, Deputy Head of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in the Context of Armed Conflict at the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

 And what about the Russians themselves? We managed to talk by phone to Andriy Malgin, director of the Tavrida Museum. It was there that the exhibits from the Kherson Art Museum were illegally transported in trucks. Malgin is confident and calm, and does not consider himself a criminal. Quite the contrary. 

"Yes, we have the entire collection. We are not the owners; we do not claim to own these objects in any way. We are only storing these objects, and it is not easy for us to do so. We will return them to the Kherson Art Museum when the situation permits. That is, after the end of hostilities, preferably all of them, not just in certain areas."

When asked who exactly forced the Crimean museum to "rescue" valuables from Kherson, Malgin refers to a document signed by the museum's management. It is about Natalia Desyatova, who took over as director during the occupation. In Ukraine, she has already been sentenced to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property for collaboration. The United States has imposed sanctions on her. However, will the Russians be able to use her signature as evidence in court? 

As if trying to provide himself with an additional alibi, in 2023 Malgin signed another agreement on the storage of artefacts, but this time with the head of the so-called Ministry of Culture of the Kherson region, which is controlled by the Russians. The invaders are skilled at creating clones of the Ukrainian ministries. They also registered a duplicate of the Kherson Art Museum in Simferopol. Why? It's not just about the propaganda effect and the desire to confuse and blur people’s eyes. It is likely that Malgin will return the exhibits to the newly built Russian clone museum. The director of the Crimean museum has already developed his skills in legal casuistry - he has already filed a lawsuit to return the stolen goods from the museum treasury. But he hasn’t drawn any conclusions. 

"We had a dispute with the Netherlands for ten years, trying to figure out what the right of operational management was and who was the owner. We have not found out anything," says Andriy Malgin.

In fact, they did. In 2013-2014, archaeological artefacts from five Ukrainian museums (one in Kyiv and four in Crimea) were presented at the exhibition "Crimea: Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea" at the Allard Pearson Museum in Amsterdam. The collection included more than 560 exhibits, including Scythian jewellery, ceremonial helmets, swords and other jewellery. After Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, a dispute arose over whether the artefacts should be returned to Ukraine or to the Crimean museums that had been taken over by Russia. In June 2023, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands finally ruled out that the artefacts should be returned to Ukraine, emphasizing Ukraine’s right to protect its cultural heritage. The collection is currently stored at the National Museum of History of Ukraine in Kyiv. 

So there are chances to see the exhibits stolen in Kherson, Mariupol and Melitopol in Ukrainian exhibition spaces. The return with the help of European countries, where stolen works of art can be exhibited, is a long but clear path. Although searches and trials may last for decades, as it happened in Germany after World War II. Gilbert Lupfer, the executive director of the German Lost Art-Datenbank Foundation, believes that the Ukrainian "art theft" is a unique case for Europe, and that such audacity has not been seen here for eighty years. Professor Lupfer knows what he is talking about. His foundation is collecting a public "Database of Lost Art". It documents cultural property that was confiscated or stolen from its owners between 1933 and 1945 by the Nazis or Bolsheviks. It is known that at the end of the war, Soviet trophy commissions were created to move German cultural property that was exported as "booty" to compensate for damage and losses. Sometimes these items are returned by the Ukrainians. 

"Once, an antique dealer from Kyiv approached the German Embassy in Kyiv and said that he had a small engraving from the early 19th century that belonged to Dresden and he would like to give it back. He brought it to the German embassy, and the Ukrainian authorities were not happy about it. They called the antique dealer to the police with the claim that he was not allowed to return anything without informing them. It was only three years later that the Ukrainian ambassador came to Dresden and returned the painting," recalls Professor Gilbert Lupfer. 

"The Lost Art Database is a tool for both the descendants of former owners and museums to return works of art to their rightful owners. Any user can search for paintings, sculptures, books, and other art objects for free. Institutions and individuals can publish announcements about the search for lost items or report the found ones. But as usual, artworks are not returned voluntarily. 

"It happens that we have found a German painting at an auction, but it has already changed hands several times, and the only option is to buy the work from them. We pay for it at the expense of patrons. In addition, the government compensates ten percent of the cost of buying back the lost valuables," explains Professor Gilbert Lupfer. 

"Do you believe in the good will of the Russians to return our artworks?" we ask prosecutor Vasyl Yatsynin. He replies, "I believe in the law and its power." Yatsynin says that his office plans to appeal to the International Criminal Court. But the court only investigates large-scale crimes, so it is worth collecting as much evidence as possible of the Russian involvement in the deliberate theft of museum exhibits. 

However, will Ukraine lose precious time documenting every single painting and ancient coin? It is extremely difficult to communicate with Vitaliy Tytych, a Ukrainian lawyer who documents genocide crimes. He is a soldier in the war zone, so his connection is constantly disconnected. In addition, there are some urgent military service tasks. Tytych points out that the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine qualifies mass thefts from museums as ordinary criminal offenses, such as illegal handling of archaeological objects. Or it mistakenly considers these crimes as domestic ones, whereas the investigation should be integrated into the overall largescale case of the crime of genocide. Then these episodes will be considered by the ICC as soon as possible. 

"Massive attacks on cultural heritage, theft of records, persecution of museum workers and the erasure of cultural space are not side effects of war, but direct signs of genocidal intent. They should be recorded as components of the crime of genocide in accordance with the practice of the ICC," emphasizes Vitaliy Tytych, Chairman of the Lemkin Society. 

Former Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko also agrees that it is necessary to emphasize the genocide. But he suggests using a different instrument of influence - sanctions. "This is a great mechanism. There are sanctions against Russian aggression and their media. By analogy, separate sanctions should be imposed on the theft of museums' movable property. In my opinion, it is worth launching a separate track on sanctions related to the genocide against the Ukrainian culture." 

Despite the public thefts, Russia remains a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). In May 2025, a French public organization initiated a petition demanding that Russia be stripped of its membership in ICOM due to the systematic misappropriation of Ukrainian cultural artefacts. However, the ICOM did not decide to expel Russia, but only condemned the deliberate destruction of the Ukrainian cultural heritage. 

Indeed, every day Ukraine is faced with the fact that other museums continue to be destroyed and looted in the territories where the fighting continues. And there is no one to stop it. At the end of 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine created a specialized unit to act urgently in such situations, but so far it exists only on paper.

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Olena Solodovnikova, Yulia Valova

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This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

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