Last week, it was reported that Russian troops had abducted Galina Andriivna Kucher, a museum curator in Melitopol, Southern Ukraine, after she refused, at gunpoint, to divulge the location of valuable artefacts from the museum’s collection. Despite her unimaginably brave stand, nearly 200 items, including a collection of 2,300 year-old gold Scythian pieces, were later looted by the machinegun-toting raiders, said the head of the city’s Museum of Local Lore, Leila Ibrahimova, who had herself been briefly abducted by Russian troops. Kucher’s whereabouts remain unknown.
According to officials, more than 250 cultural institutions across Ukraine have now been damaged or destroyed since the war started, from museums to theatres, monuments to libraries. Reports of “state-organised looting” of museum collections abound. The list of cultural targets gets longer every day.
