Remaining Friday, the historical house of Ukraine’s precious poet and thinker Hryhorii Skovoroda was once destroyed by way of a Russian artillery strike, in conjunction with a museum of his paintings.
Skovoroda’s house was once in a tiny village no longer a long way from Kharkiv — nowhere close to any evident army objectives similar to a railway or ammunition depot. The assault seems to had been a planned act of cultural vandalism, and no longer the primary because the Russian invasion started in February.
Skovoroda was once a number one determine in Ukraine’s cultural renaissance within the 18th century; this yr is the three hundredth anniversary of his start.
In a video deal with on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the assault in opposition to the house of a person “who taught other people what a real Christian perspective to existence is and the way an individual can know himself.”
“It kind of feels this can be a horrible risk for contemporary Russia: museums, the Christian perspective to existence and other people’s self-knowledge,” Zelensky stated.
Zelensky reprised the theme when marking Victory Day, quoting Skovoroda’s phrases in any other public message on Monday: “There’s not anything extra unhealthy than an insidious enemy however there may be not anything extra toxic than a feigned buddy.”
Skovoroda’s legacy has develop into symbolic of what Zelensky and different Ukrainians name the fight between two international perspectives — the ones of person freedoms and democracy in opposition to a brand new authoritarianism pushed by way of prejudice.
The governor of Kharkiv, Oleh Synyehubov, stated in a publish on Telegram: “The occupiers can spoil the museum the place Hryhoriy Skovoroda labored for the final years of his existence and the place he was once buried. However they’ll no longer spoil our reminiscence and our values!”
Whilst many volunteers and employees inside of Ukraine’s cultural sector rushed to offer protection to establishments and monuments during the rustic right through the onset of the conflict, church buildings, museums, statues and artwork collections have suffered harm.
Zelensky stated in his Saturday deal with that Russian forces have destroyed just about 200 heritage websites because the starting of the invasion.
Whether or not these kind of had been intentionally centered is open to discuss however given Vladimir Putin’s dismissive view of Ukrainian tradition it might infrequently be unexpected.
There have indisputably been acts of cultural hooliganism in spaces occupied by way of the Russians. A statue of any other distinguished Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, within the the city of Borodianka outdoor Kyiv, was once shot at a number of occasions and badly broken. The city was once occupied by way of Russian and Chechen troops for weeks.
Shevchenko’s poem “The Dream, ” which satirized Russia’s oppression of Ukraine, was once thought to be subversive and led him to be banished from Ukraine by way of Tsar Nicholas I in 1847, “underneath the strictest surveillance, with out the freedom to jot down or paint,” as Nicholas demanded.
Shevchenko is broadly thought to be the founding father of the fashionable written Ukrainian language. His outlook would had been at odds with Vladimir Putin’s view — as he put it in Februar — that “trendy Ukraine was once completely created by way of Russia or, to be extra actual, by way of Bolshevik, communist Russia.”
Now not a long way from Borodianka, a museum containing two-dozen works of the past due Ukrainian folks artist Maria Prymachenko was once struck and burned down in March. The level of wear to her works of art stays unclear with a consultant from the Maria Prymachenko Circle of relatives Basis alleging that the works had been rescued. Prymachenko’s brilliant artwork had been admired by way of Pablo Picasso who as soon as referred to as her an “creative miracle,” after visiting a display of her paintings in Paris in 1936.
Quite a few Ukrainian church buildings had been destroyed, too — a lot of them nowhere close to any army goal. Simply outdoor Kyiv an 18th century picket church in Lukyanivka was once destroyed — one of the homes within the space razed to the bottom as Russian forces withdrew from round Kyiv in April.
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CNN’s Olga Voitovych and Kostan Nechyporenko contributed to this document.
