What's Art Got To Do With It

Putin's Actions Send Chilling Message

Apr 23, 2022

Chernihiv Library for Youth ~ the first building of the Museum of Ukrainian Antiquities

Located in Chernihiv, Ukraine this building was built in 1902. It was first opened by Vasyl Tarnovskyi. He and his father assembled an impressive collection of relics of Ukrainian history and culture from different centuries.

This building was hit in a March 11th Russian airstrike. Was it intentionally targeted, I cannot say, but it underscores a significant distressing fact of Putin’s invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

Even as the war rages and the brave people of Ukraine resist Putin’s unprovoked war with them, signs of massive atrocities that amount to war crimes and genocide are all around.

According to the Mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, Russian forces once again “thwarted” a planned civilian evacuation effort from the battered city Saturday. The encircled city has been unable to obtain food or water supplies for days and some Ukrainian Soldiers in the basement of a bombed-out plant share dwindling ratios with a large number of civilians and plead with the world to help gain safe passage of the civilians. The Russian strategy appears to be to hold them in place and starve them.
Airstrikes by Russia hit two apartment buildings in Odessa. Six were known dead including a 3-month-old baby and another 18 were wounded.
Some 300 people were found dead when Russian troops pulled out of Bucha. Initial reports identified at least 50 execution-style deaths were carried out.

There are far too many atrocities to begin to list here. There have been countless incidents of civilian executions. The intentional targeting of hospitals, women raped in front of their children, and the intentional carpet bombing of the civilian population.

What message this clearly sends to the world is that Putin’s Russian soldiers are undertaking a campaign of terror and humiliation to force the Ukrainians into submission.

Putin doesn’t want to occupy Ukraine, he wants to eliminate it and its people. He wants to extend Russia to the Black Sea rolling. over Ukraine.

When genocide occurs it is like an erasure of a people. Last night as I was watching TV I saw a clip of a Ukrainians Symphony playing in some European city even as Putin’s war continues. The battle is not only to survive but keep their art and culture alive and relevant.

One of the many sad things about this war (and there are so many) is that the people of these two countries have more in common than not. Many families are a product of mixed marriages between Russian and Ukrainian families. Putin has assured that when this war is over Ukrainians will hate Russians into perpetuity.

In the very early days of the Invasion, I saw clips of paintings and other artifacts being. crated and presumably moved to safer locations. As Russian missiles continue to hit Ukrainian cities, killing hundreds of civilians as residential buildings are flattened, another casualty of war is art and culture.

Most museums and galleries were shut down in the wake of the initial Russian invasion, and Ukrainian cultural workers struggled to save artworks and artifacts that remain exposed to the attacks.

UNESCO World Heritage sites have been spared so far, but major cultural institutions have been hit and damaged or destroyed, including the Mariupol Drama Theater, which turned to rubble as hundreds of people were said to be sheltering in the basement.