Ukraine appeals to UNESCO over Russia's destruction of Chersonese in Crimea

The press service of Ukraine's Ministry of Culture reported the information.

In annexed Crimea, on the territory of the World Heritage site "Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora," Russians are building illegal construction under the guise of creating a "historical-archaeological park." In response, Ukraine's Ministry of Culture has initiated consultations with the UNESCO World Heritage Committee Secretariat to protect the site.

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, Deputy Minister of Culture Anastasia Bondar, raised this issue at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) meeting in New Delhi.

Following this, negotiations began on how to list Tauric Chersonese as a World Heritage site in Danger. However, the situation is complicated by the inability of monitoring missions to access the site, as it is located in temporarily occupied territory.

Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and Information Policy also contacted UNESCO World Heritage Centre Director Lazare Eloundou Assomo, requesting full official information on the conservation status of Chersonese and the illegal construction activities there. Ukraine has been denied access to the site since the beginning of Crimea's occupation. The director was also asked to clarify information appearing in open sources about Russia submitting documents regarding work at the UNESCO site in temporarily occupied Crimea.

The Ministry of Culture emphasized, "Russia must be held accountable under international law for both the theft of museum exhibits and illegal archaeological work, as well as other unlawful actions carried out on occupied territories concerning cultural heritage sites and movable cultural values."

According to the Institute of Archaeology and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, activities conducted by the occupying regime at the World Heritage site "Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora" since 2014 have resulted in the destruction of 80,215 square meters of the Chersonese city area.

Russia has started illegal archaeological excavations at the Chersonese site. These were carried out by employees of the Institute of History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Hermitage Museum. They conducted so-called reconstruction and construction work in Chersonese.

Tauric Chersonese has also become part of Russian propaganda, with efforts to present it as part of Russian cultural heritage, which contradicts internationally recognized borders and the status of Crimea.

In June, senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Evelina Kravchenko, stated that Russian developers constructed an open-air theater on the site of the archaeological excavations. Additionally, some of the archaeological finds were transported to Russian museums.

Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets appealed to the UN to respond to Russia's destruction of Ukraine's cultural heritage.

• On July 5, 2023, it was reported that the Russian-installed administration of Sevastopol was preparing documents to remove over 300,000 artifacts from the Tauric Chersonese museum-reserve for alleged restoration. At that time, the administration was preparing acts for the "transfer for restoration and subsequent display outside the museum" for 300,000 artifacts from the collections.