Russia has looted thousands of Ukrainian cultural objects in the war. Finding them is a challenge

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — When Alina Dotsenko returned to her museum after Ukrainian forces retook the southern city of Kherson from Russian forces in late 2022, she found thousands of artworks had vanished.

“I walked in and saw empty storage rooms, empty shelves. My legs gave way, and I just sat down by the wall, like a child,” the Kherson Art Museum director said.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, the museum held more than 14,000 works in a collection “ranging from America to Japan.” As the Russians retreated, they loaded much of it onto trucks and took it to Russian-annexed Crimea, according to Dotsenko and video filmed by residents.

The fate of nearly 10,000 pieces remains unknown.

Ukraine is again raising its voice over the looting as Russia seeks to return to the world's cultural stage. Next month's Venice Biennale plans to allow Russian representatives to take part for the first time since 2022. Ukraine has said the event “must not become a stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage.”

A rare documented case of looting

The Kherson case stands out because Ukraine knows exactly what was lost.

Years before the war, Dotsenko began photographing every item in the museum’s holdings, creating a digital archive. When Russian forces occupied Kherson, she hid the hard drives containing it. After Ukrainian troops returned, she retrieved them.

Today, that archive forms the most detailed record of looted cultural property during the war, allowing prosecutors to work with Interpol to trace missing works and pursue those responsible.

Across much of Ukraine, however, such documentation does not exist. And cultural losses can only be pursued in court if they can be proved, item by item.

The Russian Culture Ministry did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment on the alleged removal of items from Ukrainian museums. In the past, Russian-appointed officials in occupied territories described the removal as protective measures.

Kirill Stremousov, the former Russia-installed deputy administrator in Kherson who died shortly before Ukrainian forces liberated the city, said removed statues would “definitely return” once fighting stopped.

Carrying catalogs through checkpoints

Halyna Chumak, former director of the Donetsk Regional Art Museum, fled Russian-controlled Donetsk in 2014, carrying what she could: catalogs documenting a fraction of the museum’s roughly 15,000 artworks.

She spent a year transporting the catalogs through checkpoints into Ukrainian-controlled territory, leaving most behind as she tried not to draw attention from pro-Russian forces who searched her at each crossing.

Those catalogs covering just over 1,000 items are the only surviving evidence. More than a decade later, Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleksandr Velychko is digitizing them.

It took his team over three painstaking months to process about 400 works. Once completed, the database will be given to Ukrainian authorities, providing a partial legal basis to claim ownership of missing items.

Prosecutors turn to open-source intelligence

Officials say many cases across Ukraine resemble Donetsk more than Kherson.

Anna Sosonska, deputy head of a war crimes unit at Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office, said her department is handling 23 criminal proceedings involving cultural crimes, covering 174 episodes of looting, damage and destruction.

The Kherson museum case is among the priorities, she said, largely because of Dotsenko’s digital archive.

Sosonska said Russian forces often remove inventory books and other documentation from museums, making it harder to establish what was taken.

Prosecutors sometimes rely on open-source intelligence, tracking artworks through photos, auction records and other online traces — a labor-intensive process that cannot reconstruct entire collections.

It takes time, but Sosonska noted that cultural crimes fall under international law and have no statute of limitations.

The scale of looting remains unknown

Ukrainian officials say the scale of looting far exceeds what can be documented.

According to Ukraine’s Culture Ministry, Russia as of March had destroyed or damaged 1,707 cultural heritage sites and 2,503 cultural infrastructure facilities including events spaces and galleries, notably the Mariupol Drama Theatre.

The ministry said over 2.1 million museum objects remain in Russian-occupied territories. Of the territories Ukraine has retaken since 2022, over 35,000 museum items are confirmed to have been looted.

Large parts of Ukraine have been under Russian occupation since 2014, and much original documentation has been lost, destroyed or removed.

Russia has moved to formalize control over seized collections. In 2023, it amended legislation to incorporate 77 Ukrainian museums in the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions into its national catalog, a step critics say effectively prohibits the return of looted works.

Appointed as Ukraine's culture minister in October 2025, Tetiana Berezhna said digitalization will be a key priority for her office to preserve collections.

“If we had digitalized them beforehand, then we would know how many objects were stolen and what they look like,” she said.

One case of accountability

A recent case in Europe has drawn attention to the possibility of accountability.

In March, a Polish court ruled that Oleksandr Butiahin, a Russian national, can be extradited to Ukraine over allegations he conducted illegal excavations in Crimea, removing artifacts from a site Ukraine considers its cultural heritage.

Butiahin was detained in Poland last year at Ukraine’s request. The court's decision remains subject to appeal.

Sosonska described the case as the first time a Russian national could face prosecution for crimes against Ukraine’s cultural heritage linked to occupied territory.

For museum workers like Dotsenko, the issue remains deeply personal.

She spoke with The Associated Press at an exhibition in Kyiv featuring reproductions of the paintings taken from the Kherson museum.

“While these works are still in captivity, we all hope the situation will be resolved in favor of the Kherson Art Museum. I didn’t dedicate 50 years of my life to this museum for nothing,” she said. ——— AP journalist Dmytro Zhyhinas contributed to this report