When Alina Dotsenko returned to her museum in Kherson after Ukrainian forces retook the southern city from Russian forces in late 2022, she walked into devastation. Thousands of artworks had vanished from the Kherson Art Museum, which before Russia’s full-scale invasion held more than 14,000 works. Russian forces had loaded much of the collection onto trucks and transported it to Russian-annexed Crimea, according to Dotsenko and video filmed by residents. The fate of nearly 10,000 pieces remains unknown, even as Ukraine pursues international accountability for cultural theft during the war.
The Kherson case stands out not just for the scale of loss, but because documentation exists. With prosecutors handling 23 criminal proceedings involving cultural crimes and the international community watching as Russia seeks to return to the global stage through venues like next month’s Venice Biennale, the question of accountability for cultural looting has become a test of whether international law can reach wartime property crimes.
“I walked in and saw empty storage rooms, empty shelves,” Dotsenko said. “My legs gave way, and I just sat down by the wall, like a child.”
A Documented Exception
What made the Kherson case exceptional was that Dotsenko photographed every item in the museum’s holdings years before the war, creating a digital archive. When Russian forces occupied Kherson, she hid the hard drives. After Ukrainian troops returned, she retrieved them. That archive now forms the most detailed record of looted cultural property during the war, according to Anna Sosonska, deputy head of a war crimes unit at Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office. It allows prosecutors to work with Interpol to trace missing works and pursue those responsible.
The Wider Toll
Across much of Ukraine, such documentation does not exist. 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. Russian-appointed officials in occupied territories have described the removals 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.
Other museum directors faced different obstacles. 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. Years later, Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleksandr Velychko began digitizing them. It took his team over three 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.
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 event spaces and galleries. The Mariupol Drama Theatre was among the destroyed facilities. The ministry reported that over 2.1 million museum objects remain in Russian-occupied territories. Of territories Ukraine has retaken since 2022, over 35,000 museum items are confirmed to have been looted.
Much original documentation was lost, destroyed or removed during Russia’s occupation since 2014. Russia moved to formalize control over seized collections in 2023, amending legislation to incorporate 77 Ukrainian museums in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions into its national catalog. Critics say this step effectively prohibits the return of looted works.
Prosecution and Accountability
Sosonska’s department is handling 23 criminal proceedings involving cultural crimes, covering 174 episodes of looting, damage and destruction. Prosecutors sometimes rely on open-source intelligence, tracking artworks through photos, auction records and other online traces. This work cannot reconstruct entire collections, but cultural crimes fall under international law and have no statute of limitations, giving prosecutors indefinite time to pursue cases.
The first possible prosecution of a Russian national for such crimes emerged in March, when 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.
Moving Forward
Tetiana Berezhna, appointed as Ukraine’s culture minister in October 2025, said digitalization will be a key priority for her office. “If we had digitalized them beforehand, then we would know how many objects were stolen and what they look like,” she said.
For 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.