A view of Kyiv’s Motherland monument and the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in April 2020.
Photographer: Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
The Ukrainian Cultural Sites at Risk of Destruction
With Ukrainians facing continued attacks from Russian forces, the heritage that forms their national identity is also under siege.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine intensifies, one of the most remarkable — and least internationally known — heritages of any European country is now in acute peril.
Already, a cruise missile that gutted Kharkiv’s city council building also shattered glass and damaged artwork in the nearby Dormition Cathedral, a towering neo-classical church built in the 1820s. Nearby and also at risk is one of the early 20th century’s most remarkable complexes — the Derzhprom Palace of Industry, a crescent of sky-scraping constructivist towers linked by elevated walkways that was the world’s largest building by volume when completed in 1928. Meanwhile, shelling has already damaged a key Kharkiv literary landmark: the city’s Slovo building, built in the 1920s to house writers who revitalized Ukrainian literature before suffering Stalin era persecution.