25/04/2022 11:27

Commissioner: The Russian aggressor is purposefully destroying the cultural heritage of Ukraine

Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the aggressor has been purposefully shelling and destroying objects of cultural heritage and cultural values   of Ukrainians.

According to the operative information of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, 242 episodes of war crimes of the occupiers against the Ukrainian cultural heritage have already been documented.

Numerous architectural monuments, historic buildings, religious sites, theaters and memorials have been damaged or completely destroyed.  Monuments of sacred architecture are also being destroyed.

The occupiers recently shelled the island of Khortytsia in Zaporizhia, a center of the Ukrainian Cossacks.

In the Kyiv region, a building of the early twentieth century - the Makariv Public Library - was damaged.

In the Kharkiv region, the ancient Teachers' House of 1925 and many other historical monuments were damaged by shelling.

In the Luhansk region, the russians destroyed at least seven Orthodox churches.

The Islamic Cultural Center "Bismillah" in Severodonetsk and the prayer room of the ECB in Metelkino were also destroyed.

According to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its Protocols, any person commits a crime if he or she makes cultural property protected under the Convention an object of attack.

I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigate Human Rights Violations during the Russian Military Invasion of Ukraine to take into account these facts of human rights violations in Ukraine.