Russia damaged 763 objects of Ukraine's cultural heritage

Ukrainska Pravda
·3 min read

Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy has updated the statistics on damaged cultural heritage sites in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. From 24 February 2022 to 25 July 2023, 763 such objects were damaged or destroyed.

Source: This was reported by the press service of the Ministry of Culture

According to the Ministry of Culture, among the objects 105 are of national importance, 595 are of local importance, and 63 are recently identified. Of those, 241 are objects of architecture, 218 are of architecture and urban planning, 185 of history, 28 are of architecture and history, 19 of monumental art, 17 of urban planning and monumental art, 18 of archeology, 27 of architecture, urban planning and history, 5 of urban planning, 2 of science and technology, 1 of landscape art, 1 of architecture, urban planning and monumental art, and 1 of architecture and monumental art.

Of the sites presented in the list, 23 monuments were completely destroyed, 625 were partially damaged, the degree of damage to 115 remains unknown.

The Ministry of Culture recorded damage to cultural heritage sites in 15 oblasts:

  • Kharkiv Oblast – 207 objects

  • Donetsk Oblast – 100

  • Kherson Oblast – 76

  • Kyiv Oblast – 69

  • Odesa Oblast – 69

  • Chernihiv Oblast – 63

  • Zaporizhzhia Oblast – 35

  • Lviv Oblast – 32

  • Dnipropetrovsk Oblast – 28

  • Luhansk Oblast – 25

  • Sumy Oblast – 25

  • Mykolaiv Oblast – 22

  • Khmelnytskyi Oblast – 6

  • Vinnytsia Oblast – 4

  • Zhytomyr Oblast – 2

Less than a month ago, the Ministry of Culture reported that it had recorded damage or destruction of more than 664 cultural heritage sites, excluding cultural infrastructure, such as libraries or other institutions housed in modern buildings.

"We will be able to see the full picture after the end of the war and only after most of the war zones have been cleared and become directly accessible to researchers. As of today, we can survey and fully document mainly those objects that are located in liberated territories and territories that are relatively remote from the front line," said Deputy Minister Kateryna Chuieva.

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Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, destroyed by a Russian missile. Photo: Hennadii Trukhanov/Facebook

UNESCO data

UNESCO draws up its own statistics on the damaged cultural sites in Ukraine. In early August, it issued an updated list confirming damage to 274 cultural sites since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

UNESCO experts recorded the most such damage in Donetsk (78 objects), Kharkiv (55 objects), Kyiv (38 objects), Luhansk (33 objects) and Chernihiv oblasts (17). They also added to their lists damage in Zaporizhzhia and Sumy (12 objects each), Odesa and Mykolaiv (8 each), Kherson (6), Zhytomyr (3), Vinnytsia (2) and Dnipropetrovsk and Lviv oblasts (1 each).

The work of UNESCO in the direction of documenting damage in Ukraine during the current war is sometimes publicly criticised by state officials. For example, after the missile attack on Lviv on the night of 6 July, when Russia hit the buffer zone of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, ex-Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said: "As always, we are waiting for actions greater than just deep concern." The mayor of Lviv, Andrii Sadovyi, noted that he did not see representatives of the organisation protecting the historical heritage on the site of the missile strike.

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