18 April – International Day for Monuments and Sites

18 April – International Day for Monuments and Sites

The international cultural community established this day to raise public awareness of the world’s diversity and national cultural heritage, its vulnerability, and the need for practical efforts to preserve it for future generations.

For Ukraine, the issue of preserving our cultural heritage during the ongoing targeted Russian aggression is extremely acute. It is not only about the physical destruction of cultural objects as a result of hostilities, but also about hybrid attacks on Ukrainian identity – theft and destruction of cultural heritage, manipulation of historical narratives, attempts to erase Ukrainian culture as such. In trying to destroy our culture – to culturally devalue, to “zero out” Ukrainians, as it were – the aggressor seeks to break the internal resilience of the Ukrainian people.

The Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications (MCSC) of Ukraine, Mykola Tochytsky, noted in a recent interview with UKRINFORM: “One million seven hundred thousand units of our cultural heritage have been stolen in the occupied territories: from archaeological finds to museum collections, which the Russian Federation has appropriated in violation of all possible norms of international law”. With the support of international partners and friends of Ukraine, Ukraine is actively searching for the stolen artifacts and working on their return.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, evacuation measures have been carried out from 63 cultural institutions in the regions of Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odessa, Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy, and the city of Kyiv.
The Russian aggressor has destroyed and damaged thousands of historical and cultural sites and cultural infrastructure facilities in Ukraine for more than three years of war. The protected area and objects of the Khortytia National Reserve have repeatedly been the object of attacks by the enemy army, and they are still in the zone of constant risk of bombardment. For example, Kamianska Sich in the Kherson region was hit by bombs, and the island of Khortytsia suffered almost fifty destructive enemy strikes.

Every day, the Khortytsia National Reserve employees make maximum efforts to preserve the Ukrainian historical and cultural heritage, and scientific, educational, and environmental work continues.

Ukrainian culture is invincible, because its carriers – Ukrainians – are invincible!