U.S. Provides Recommendations to Ukraine on Preserving Cultural Heritage Sites

The ceaseless bombardment of Ukraine’s cities, infrastructure, and people by Russia’s forces has created one of the fastest-growing humanitarian crises in recent decades and put Ukraine’s unique and irreplaceable cultural heritage in the crosshairs, a key U.S. diplomat overseeing cultural heritage affairs, told reporters in Washington D.C.

Ukraine’s cultural heritage is irreplaceable, and its damage or destruction would be a profound loss to the entire world.

"The international community must stand together to safeguard Ukraine’s unique cultural heritage, both now and in the future" State Department's Cultural Heritage Center Director Eric Catalfamo said during a press briefing organized by the Department's Foreign Press Centers.

"Wherever cultural heritage is damaged... that damage really represents a profound loss to us all," Catalfamo told TURAN's Washington correspondent when asked detailed about the U.S. involvement.

"We know that Ukraine is home to centuries-old historical and architectural landmarks that speak to the unique cultural identity of the people of Ukraine, and that the destruction of Ukraine’s cultural heritage is an attack on the identity of those people", the diplomat said.

Putin’s denial of Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent, sovereign state and as a culturally, historically, and geopolitically distinct entity is, "unfortunately, consistent with a long series of attempts first by imperial Russia, and then later by the totalitarian Soviet Union, to subjugate and forcibly Russify Ukraine," the diplomat added.

The Biden administration is providing recommendations to the Ukraine government and to specialists there on possible ways to protect items of cultural heritage amid Russia’s special operation in the country.

"We are working with partners in the U.S. Government and affiliated agencies, including the Smithsonian Institution, on how we can give advice to Ukrainian cultural heritage professionals and museum professionals to be able to safeguard items in the here and now." Catalfamo said.

The State Department chairs an interagency body called the Cultural Heritage Coordinating Committee, which specifically works on cultural heritage protection in situations where that heritage is prone to damage through a variety of reasons, including conflict.

"So we’re in the coordination stage now, but some of our member agencies and member bodies have been taking concrete action." Catalfamo added.

The U.S. has already assessed that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, and we note with concern that any intentional attacks on cultural property may violate the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

Secretary Blinken has said that there must be accountability for these actions, and the United States is supporting a range of mechanisms to document and pursue accountability for war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.

A team from the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative and the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab outlined their commitment to documenting Ukraine’s tens of thousands of cultural heritage sites and their status during Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine.

"At the moment, we are monitoring over 26,000 cultural heritage sites in Ukraine... which includes everything from international significance, national significance, regional, all the way down to very locally significant cultural heritage", said Hayden Bassett, the director of the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab at the Virginia Museum of Natural History,

"We gather information from open sources – social media, news media, that type of thing. But really our – most of our monitoring effort relies on satellite technologies," Bassett said.

Since 2001, the U.S. has awarded over $1.7 million in grants to support the preservation of Ukrainian ethnographic objects, religious sites, manuscripts, and historic and academic buildings, including important Ukrainian historical sites.

"We will continue to support the Cultural Heritage Center in Ukraine moving forward. This commitment is part of our whole-of-government response to Russia’s unprovoked aggression, and just another example of how we stand united with Ukraine,"  Catalfamo said.

Looking back, the State Department official said, even before Russia’s 2022 war against Ukraine, Russia illegally exported artifacts from Crimea and took them for display in Russia, conducted unauthorized archaeological expeditions, demolished Muslim burial sites, and damaged cultural heritage sites.

"So there’s a history here, and in the very opening days of this conflict, we saw the damage to the Ivankiv Museum that Hayden demonstrated on the screen. We saw as well the really unconscionable, horrific bombing that took place in the area around Babyn Yar, which is a site in Kyiv where more than 100,000 Ukrainian Jews and non-Jews were executed during the Second World War by Nazi German forces," Catalfamo added.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.