By Anietie anii-bassey
When Ukrainian forces regained control of the southern city of Kherson in late 2022, museum director Alina Dotsenko returned to the city’s art museum expecting to find damage caused by months of war and occupation. Instead, she found something far worse. Thousands of artworks had disappeared.
Dotsenko said she walked through empty storage rooms and bare shelves where paintings, sculptures and rare objects had once stood. The shock was overwhelming. She recalled that her legs gave way beneath her as she sat down against a wall in tears.
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the museum in Kherson contained more than 14,000 works of art from different countries and periods, including collections from the United States, Japan and across Europe. It was considered one of the most important regional museums in southern Ukraine.
According to Dotsenko and local residents who filmed the retreat of Russian forces, many of the museum’s most valuable works were loaded onto trucks and taken away as Russian troops withdrew from the city. Ukrainian officials believe the artworks were transported to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Nearly 10,000 pieces from the Kherson museum remain missing, and their exact location is still unknown.
The case has become one of the clearest examples of alleged cultural looting during the war. Ukrainian officials say the theft of art and historical objects is part of a broader effort to erase Ukrainian identity in territories occupied by Russia.
The issue has gained new attention as Russia attempts to re-enter major international cultural events. Russian representatives are expected to participate in the upcoming Venice Biennale for the first time since 2022.
Ukraine has strongly objected to Russia’s return to the event, arguing that international cultural institutions should not ignore what Ukrainian officials describe as the systematic destruction and theft of the country’s cultural heritage.
The Kherson case is unusual because Ukraine has a detailed record of exactly what was taken.
Years before the war, Dotsenko began photographing every item in the museum’s collection and storing the images in a digital archive. She understood the importance of preserving accurate records and spent years documenting thousands of objects piece by piece.
When Russian forces occupied Kherson, she hid the hard drives containing the archive to prevent them from being discovered. After Ukrainian forces retook the city, she returned to retrieve the files.
Today, that archive is one of the most important tools available to Ukrainian investigators. It provides detailed proof of what was once inside the museum and allows prosecutors to compare the records with any artworks that appear in Russian museums, private collections or international markets.
The archive is also being used in cooperation with Interpol to help identify missing pieces and trace where they may have been taken.
Across much of Ukraine, however, such detailed records do not exist. In many museums, especially those in eastern and southern parts of the country, inventories were incomplete or destroyed during years of conflict.
In Donetsk, former museum director Halyna Chumak fled the city in 2014 after Russian-backed forces took control of the region. She was only able to carry a limited number of catalogs documenting part of the museum’s collection.
The Donetsk museum had around 15,000 artworks, but the catalogs Chumak saved documented only slightly more than 1,000 of them. She spent a year transporting the materials through military checkpoints into Ukrainian-controlled territory, often risking discovery by armed men searching travelers.
Those surviving catalogs are now the only evidence that many of the artworks ever existed.
More than a decade later, Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleksandr Velychko is working to digitize the remaining records. His team spent more than three months processing about 400 works, carefully scanning documents and photographs.
Once completed, the database will be handed to Ukrainian authorities and used as legal evidence to support future claims for the return of stolen items.
Officials say many museum cases across Ukraine resemble Donetsk more than Kherson.
Anna Sosonska, who works in Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office, said authorities are currently handling 23 criminal investigations involving crimes against cultural heritage. These cases include 174 separate incidents involving looting, damage and destruction.
She said the Kherson museum remains one of the highest priorities because the digital archive provides such strong evidence.
According to Sosonska, Russian forces often remove inventory books, ownership records and other official documents from museums before leaving occupied areas. Without those records, it becomes much harder to prove what was taken.
As a result, investigators are increasingly relying on open-source intelligence. They search photographs, online auction sites, museum websites and social media posts to track artworks that may have appeared in other countries or private collections.
Such work is slow and difficult, and investigators admit it cannot fully reconstruct the losses suffered by Ukraine’s museums. Still, prosecutors say they are prepared for long-term efforts because crimes involving cultural heritage have no statute of limitations under international law.
The overall scale of the looting remains unclear.
According to Ukraine’s Culture Ministry, Russia had destroyed or damaged 1,707 cultural heritage sites and 2,503 cultural infrastructure facilities by March. These include museums, galleries, libraries, churches, theaters and public monuments.
Among the most notable damaged sites is the Mariupol Drama Theatre, which became an international symbol of the devastation caused by the war.
The ministry estimates that more than 2.1 million museum objects are still located in Russian-occupied territories. In areas Ukraine has retaken since 2022, more than 35,000 museum items have already been confirmed as looted.
Large parts of Ukraine have remained under Russian control since 2014, meaning that many original museum records were lost, destroyed or removed years before the full-scale invasion began.
Russia has also moved to strengthen legal control over the collections it seized. In 2023, Russian authorities changed legislation to include 77 Ukrainian museums from occupied regions in Russia’s national museum catalog.
The affected museums are located in the occupied areas of Donetsk region, Luhansk region, Kherson region and Zaporizhzhia region.
Critics say the move makes it easier for Russia to claim ownership of looted works and harder for Ukraine to secure their return in the future.
Tetiana Berezhna, who became Ukraine’s culture minister in October 2025, said creating digital archives for museums will be one of her ministry’s most important tasks.
She said many of the missing artworks could have been identified more quickly if detailed digital records had already existed before the war began.
A recent case in Poland has raised hopes that people accused of crimes against Ukrainian cultural heritage may eventually face justice.
In March, a Polish court ruled that Oleksandr Butiahin could be extradited to Ukraine. He is accused of conducting illegal excavations in Crimea and removing artifacts from a site that Ukraine considers part of its national cultural heritage.
Butiahin was arrested in Poland last year at Ukraine’s request. Although the court’s ruling can still be appealed, Ukrainian officials say the case could become the first example of a Russian citizen being prosecuted for crimes involving Ukraine’s cultural heritage in occupied territory.
For Dotsenko, the missing artworks are not only part of a legal battle or a political dispute. They are part of her life’s work.
Speaking at an exhibition in Kyiv featuring reproductions of the stolen paintings from the Kherson museum, she said she still hopes the artworks will one day be returned.
She said she spent 50 years building and protecting the museum’s collection and believes those works still belong to the people of Kherson.
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