Russia has committed at least 534 offenses against Ukrainian cultural heritage sites since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, according to figures by the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies (CISS), a nonprofit registered in Kyiv.
That’s according to CNN.
Violations include “appropriation of cultural heritage sites, use of cultural property for military purposes, transfer of cultural property from the occupied territories, looting of museums, illegal archaeological works, modification and reconstruction of monuments and decontextualization of historical sites,” project manager Elmira Ablialimova-Chyigoz said.
The organization has been researching cultural heritage violations dating back to 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, where Ablialimova-Chyigoz noted 200 offenses have been recorded.
In other Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia since 2022 (Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk), 334 cultural heritage violations have been recorded, she said.
