This museum director is staying in Kyiv as Ukrainian culture comes under fire

Story Transcript

When Russia invaded Ukraine, thousands of people fled the country. But Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta had a job to do.

She's the director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex in Kyiv, one of Europe's largest art museums and home to a vast collection of Ukrainian avant garde art, literature and music.

Ostrovska-Liuta says she and her colleagues spent the first 10 days of the invasion implementing a plan to ensure the museum's pieces are safeguarded from Russian attack. She says she cannot disclose the details of exactly what they did, or where the artworks are now. 

"Ukrainian culture is under attack, obviously," Ostrovska-Liuta, told As It Happens guest host Gillian Findlay. "All my colleagues, directors of other museums, are staying at the moment."

Ostrovska-Liuta remains in the city, though she says that could change. The museum, meanwhile, is closed to  the public.

At the Odessa Fine Arts Museum, acting director Oleksandra Kovalchuk, had to flee Ukraine with her child, but told the BBC she's hearing similar stories of museum workers across the country risking life and limb to project the country's cultural treasures.

"In almost every museum, workers are sleeping, staying for days to be close to the art, to be able to make some last-minute decisions," she said.

Cultural institutions under attack 

Ostrovska-Liuta says she believes Russia will deliberately target Ukrainian architecture and cultural artifacts as part of its incursion into the country. 

Already, 25 paintings by Ukrainian artist Maria Primachenko were destroyed in a Russian attack on the Ivankiv Museum north of Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Museums, art galleries, libraries and archives are the guardians of the collective stories of a people or a nation. To destroy a nation's cultural institutions and collections is to strike at its heart," the Canadian Museums Association said in a press release last week. 

"Efforts to destroy Ukraine's cultural institutions must be viewed as part of a larger attempt to erase the foundations of its national identity and existence."

Ostrovska-Liuta says the Mystetskyi Arsenal's artworks should be safe for now, but she worries about the building itself.

The city centre, where the museum is located, remains far from the fighting that's taking place in the towns and suburbs on the city's outskirts. But that could change at any moment.

"The shelling and bombing is probably the largest problem now. Therefore, you have so many pleas from Ukrainians to … cover our skies, establish a no-fly zone, because this is the only thing that can protect both civilians and cultural treasures," Ostrovska-Liuta said.

The museum is just nine kilometres from St. Sophia's Cathedral, which has been designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Ukraine is home to seven World Heritage sites. UNESCO said on Tuesday that it is marking cultural sites and monuments in Ukraine with the distinctive "Blue Shield" emblem of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

"The marking with the emblem of the Convention also comes from the fact that Russia and Ukraine are two countries to have ratified this important convention," Lazare Eloundou Assomo, the director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, told Reuters.

Ostrovska-Liuta says she was horrified to see heavy shelling in Kharkiv destroy historical buildings, some of which she says survived the Second World War and were "jewels" of Ukrainian culture.

She says the attacks on cultural institutions are part and parcel with Russia's plans for her country.

"It's connected to the fact that Russia is an empire. And the very existence of Ukraine poses a huge problem for a Russian empire, because there is a lot of Ukrainian heritage in the heart of that empire," she said.

"[The] existence of Ukraine and its culture poses the question: What is Russia, then? And [Russian President Vladimir] Putin gives his answer. He says there is no Ukraine. We will just invade it and make it one with Putin's Russia, then this problem is resolved."

Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from Reuters. Interview with  Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta produced by Kevin Robertson.