President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has enacted a National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) decision to impose personal sanctions on 15 directors of Russian museums involved in implementing anti-Ukrainian policies in the museum sector.

Source: Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine

Details: According to the Ukrainian National Committee of ICOM, as of March 2025, Russia’s official state museum catalogue contained information on 39 Ukrainian museums located in territories temporarily occupied since 2022. In August 2024, only six such museums were listed.

The ministry stated that these actions violate the provisions of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

“Instead of ensuring the protection of cultural heritage in the occupied territories, the Russian Federation is officially appropriating museum collections and institutions, using them for propaganda purposes,” the statement said.

The sanctions list includes, in particular, Artyom Silkin and Galina Alekseyeva, who are standing for election to the governing bodies of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

Sanctions apply to Russian citizens who are involved in the illegal cataloguing of Ukrainian cultural assets in the Russian state museum database, who have personally visited temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories since February 2022 and who participate in efforts to legitimise the occupation regime and promote narratives that justify Russia’s armed aggression.

Ukraine will now advocate for the introduction of similar sanctions at the European Union level. The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy explained that this may call into question the continued participation of Russian representatives in international processes.

Background:

Earlier, the French civil society organisation Pour l’Ukraine, pour leur liberté et la nôtre! (For Ukraine, for their and our freedom!) launched a petition demanding that Russia be stripped of its ICOM membership over the looting of Ukrainian collections in the occupied territories.Russia began removing cultural valuables from occupied Crimea as early as 2014. In 2016, it was recorded that 38 of the 120 works displayed at an Ivan Aivazovsky exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery had been stolen from Crimean collections.In July 2024, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Chersonesus was dismantled and looted, and in its place, a “Museum of Crimea and Novorossiya” was established – an institution promoting propaganda narratives that justify Russian aggression.Over 13,000 items were stolen from the Oleksii Shovkunenko Art Museum and the Kherson Oblast Museum of Local History. In Mariupol, Russian forces seized major works by Arkhyp Kuindzhi and Ivan Aivazovsky. The “Scythian Gold” collection from the Melitopol Museum of Local History has simply disappeared.

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