Our association For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!, with the help of our lawyers, Maîtres Emmanuel Daoud, Gabriel Sebbah and Justine Vinet, filed a communication at the end of June 2025 with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court denouncing and detailing the spoliation of Ukrainian cultural heritage by Russia.

After a lengthy investigation, we were able to determine the modus operandi of this predation, developed at the highest levels of the Russian state, and identify the main perpetrators of acts aimed at appropriating Ukrainian cultural heritage. These acts can be classified as war crimes under international law. Led by Vladimir Putin, the implementation of this policy of plunder involves senior officials from the Russian Ministry of Culture, including the directors of major museums, and even Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russian foreign intelligence.

Accordingly, we request the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to:

• REQUESTS Pre-Trial Chamber II to issue arrest warrants as soon as possible for the persons most responsible for these crimes within the Russian administrative and political apparatus and institutional and non-institutional organizations under its control, including Vladimir Putin; Tatiana Alexeyevna Golikova; Denis Vladimirovich Molchanov; Olga Lyubimova; Sergei Obryvalin; Sergei Naryshkin; Andrei Vitalievich Malgin; Mikhail Piotrovsky and Alexandr Shkolnik.

  
  

Sylvie Rollet, president of "For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!"

Emmanuel Daoud, lawyer at the Paris bar, registered on the lists of Counsel to the ICC, VIGO firm

Since the conquest of Crimea in 2014 and the large-scale operation launched on February 24, 2022, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by a policy aimed at eradicating Ukrainian identity . Russian aggression is not limited to the deliberate destruction of cultural sites throughout the country (see the damage recorded by UNESCO (1) . It has given rise to the largest spoliation of cultural heritage in Europe, in times of international armed conflict, since the Second World War (2) .

In the territories occupied by Russia (to which our investigation is devoted), the erasure of Ukrainian identity involves the appropriation and Russification of Ukraine's cultural heritage:

• Banning of the Ukrainian language and systematic destruction of all works in the Ukrainian language;

• Methodical looting of museums in the occupied zone, supervised by officials sent by Russia, and frequently followed by exhibitions of looted works in Russian museums;

• Systematic destruction of all places bearing the memory of Ukrainian artists.

(1) https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/damaged-cultural-sites-in-ukraine-confirmed-by-unesco

As of June 25, 2025, UNESCO confirms that 501 sites have been damaged since February 24, 2022: 151 religious buildings, 34 museums, 262 historic and/or artistic buildings, 33 monuments and 18 libraries, 1 archive and 2 archaeological sites.

(2) https://www.ukrinform.fr/rubric-society/3980949-les-russes-ont-vole-plus-de-1-700-000-œuvres-dart-et-biens-culturels-dans-les-territoires-occupes-de-lukraine.html