80% of Kherson Art Museum’s collection looted by occupiers — Minister Tkachenko

The occupiers robbed and took approximately 80% of the collection of Kherson Art Museum with them. At a briefing at Media Center Ukraine — Ukrinform, Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine spoke about what the reaction of Ukraine and the West regarding the guarantees for the return of the exhibits might be.

“This is about 80% of the collection of the Art Museum. Our specialists are working to assess the extent of the robbery. This question was raised in UNESCO regarding verifying what was stolen to prevent the illegal traffic of our exhibits. On the one hand, all these horrors about the robbery tell us about russians’ destructive fight against our culture and identity. On the other hand, we need immediate action regarding the criminalization of russian activities in the culture industry. Our proposal was as follows. If the West is already seizing the assets of russian oligarchs and state corporations, there is this “wonderful” organization “Rossotrudnichestvo”. They have a very large number of buildings around the world. The arrest of these buildings would be a good response and a sign of guarantees for the return of the exhibits to us,” — Tkachenko said. 

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