‘Ukraine doesn’t forget its cultural landmarks’: the team risking their lives to rescue statues from the frontline

Yurii Fanygin, a historian, rescues Polovtsian stone sculptures from the battlefield. The nomadic steppe tribe lived in Ukraine in the early medieval period. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

A bearded expert and a group of Ukrainian soldiers arrived in the village of Slovianka on a special mission. Their goal did not involve shooting at invading Russian forces. Instead, they had come to rescue a unique piece of history before it could be swallowed up by war and a frontline creeping closer.

The soldiers placed a giant object on a wooden pallet. It was a carved stone figure created about 800 years ago. The sculpture – of a woman holding a ceremonial pot, wearing a necklace and with tiny legs – was lifted gently on to a flatbed truck. “We didn’t think we would have to evacuate it. But we do. It’s sad,” Yurii Fanyhin, who coordinated the operation, explained.