For Ukraine, for their Freedom and Ours ! - CSO
CAMPAIGN -
Looting of cultural property
For Ukraine, document and advocate for the deliberate erasure of Ukrainian identity to be recognized as a war crime.
Since 2022, For Ukraine has been leading the benchmark investigation into the systematic looting of Ukrainian cultural heritage—a crime planned at the highest levels of the Russian state, documented in partnership with the Raphael Lemkin Society and the Argo Project.
In June 2025, For Ukraine filed a landmark communication with the International Criminal Court targeting Vladimir Putin and eight high-ranking Russian officials for war crimes.
For Ukraine published an op-ed in Le Monde calling for Russia's exclusion from ICOM and moderated a roundtable discussion on cultural spoliation at INALCO with Desk Russia. The fight against the erasure of a millennia-old culture continues.
What " For Ukraine" is specifically asking for
For Ukraine and its partner associations, the following actions are being called for:
From the International Criminal Court (ICC)
issue arrest warrants against Putin and 8 senior Russian officials
Including Golikova, Molchanov, Lyubimova, Narychkine, Malgin, Piotrovsky, Shkolnik — for war crimes against Ukrainian cultural heritage.
From the International Council of Museum (ICOM)
immediately exclude ICOM Russia and its complicit members
Including Komlev (Orenburg) and Pankratov, whose activities of Russification of museums in occupied Ukraine constitute crimes recognized by the EU.
From the European Union (EU)
extend its sanctions to complicit museum directors
Beyond the Morozova case: sanction all institutional actors involved in the policy of erasing Ukrainian cultural identity.
From the Venice Biennale
Refusing the return of the Russian flag as long as the war of aggression continues
The reopening of the Russian pavilion in 2026, orchestrated by a commissioner linked to the Kremlin, is an operation of cultural rehabilitation.
Understanding the issue
The double Russification
Property ownership + historical narrative — the two weapons of erasure
The cultural plundering of Ukraine is not collateral damage of the war: it is a deliberate strategy of identity erasure, planned even before the large-scale invasion. It operates on two fronts simultaneously: the ownership of cultural property (looting, legislative re-registration, integration into Russian collections) and the narrative surrounding it (exhibitions glorifying Novorossiya, destruction of inventories, rewriting of history). Erasing evidence of Ukrainian ownership is to erase evidence that Ukraine ever existed.
Christian Castagna, Advocacy Manager for Pour l'Ukraine — interview Tyzhden, March 2025
The investigation by Pour l'Ukraine establishes that the looting is based on four structural mechanisms, planned at the top of the Russian state since 2014.
A documented premeditation at the highest level of the State
The FSB and the occupation authorities sent civilian administrators to inventory museums before they were looted. The Duma passed a legislative arsenal transforming the cultural assets of the annexed oblasts into Russian property. This wasn't wartime vandalism; it was Soviet planning applied to cultural crime—with Putin, Naryshkin (SVR), and the Ministry of Culture as the masterminds.
Destroying evidence as a strategy for impunity
Systematically, during the looting of museums (Kherson, Mariupol, Melitopol), the Russians destroy inventories and catalogs. As a result, Ukraine must reconstruct the ownership of each object from scratch—a virtually impossible process. UNESCO itself acknowledges this: "When the Russians steal works of art, they destroy the inventories." The destruction of evidence is a legal weapon in its own right.
A massive looting with documented figures — and 77 museums forcibly integrated into the Russian state catalogue
In Kherson, over 13,000 objects were stolen from the Shovkunenko Museum and the Local History Museum by curators working under the supervision of the FSB. The Melitopol Scythian Gold Collection simply vanished. In Mariupol, major works by Aivazovsky and Kuindzhi were seized by the military. The collections of 77 Ukrainian museums in the occupied territories are now listed in the State Catalogue of Museum Funds of the Russian Federation. Since May 2023, “methodological recommendations” from the Russian Ministry of Culture have dictated to museum directors how to mount exhibitions glorifying the “special military operation.”
An international institutional indifference that raises questions
The president of ICOM Russia, Vassily Pankratov, openly supports the policy of Russification of museums in occupied territories. ICOM members like Yuriy Komlev publicly document their Russification work in the Donetsk Oblast—and are decorated for it by the Russian state. To date, the international museum organization has taken no action to exclude them. It is this inaction that Pour l'Ukraine is calling out.
What lies behind the 526 damaged sites (UNESCO, April 15, 2026)
Behind this overall figure lies the reality of a strategy of total erasure, across all areas:
153 religious buildings destroyed or damaged — erasing Ukrainian spiritual life
39 museums affected, looted or transformed
275 historic and artistic buildings — urban memory destroyed
21 libraries and 1 archive — the prohibition of language and written memory
4 archaeological sites including Chersonese, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
More than 1.7 million items stolen in the occupied territories
