The Kyiv Independent’s Chris York sat down with author, historian, and Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9, which mark the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II, are one of the country’s biggest public events of the year. President of the Ukrainian Society of Switzerland Andrej Lushnycky who sheds some light on the things Putin would rather you didn’t know about World War II.
Washington’s involvement may also help mitigate political opposition in Europe, while giving the U.S. strategic visibility over future Russian energy flows, sources told Reuters.
The agreement, signed on April 30, establishes a joint investment fund between Kyiv and Washington and grants the U.S. special access to projects developing Ukraine's natural resources.
This photograph taken on Dec. 22, 2022, shows a broken glass box in the looted museum halls at the Kherson Museum, which specializes in local history and natural history in Kherson, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)
The Kyiv Independent identified a Russian military officer and three Russian-appointed officials from occupied Crimea who were responsible for the illegal removal of artworks and artifacts from two Kherson museums in the fall of 2022.
Fleeing a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russian forces collectively stole more than 33,000 historical artifacts and works of art. This museum theft is the largest in Europe since World War II.
Those who oversaw the theft are Dmitry Lipov, head of the communications center of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, who served as the city's commandant during the occupation of Kherson, Sergey Patrushev, appointed by the Russian authorities to head the museum department of the so-called Crimean Ministry of Culture, Elena Morozova and Mikhail Smorodkin, appointed by the Russian authorities as directors of the Crimean museums, Tauric Chersonese and the Museum of Defense of Sevastopol.
The findings are the basis for the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigation Unit's documentary "Curated Theft."
To identify those who took part in the government-sanctioned theft, the Kyiv Independent journalist posed as a Russian TV producer and as a Russian investigator to communicate with local collaborators who helped Russian troops loot.
The Kyiv Independent found that Russian officer Lipov was responsible for securing the collections during their removal and personally sealed the trucks that carried the stolen items.
Patrushev was responsible for moving paintings from the Kherson Art Museum to occupied Crimea.
The directors of the Crimean museums chose items from the Kherson Local History museum's collection during the looting.
The Kyiv Independent also found that the illegal removal of collections from Kherson to occupied Crimea was supervised by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
Yevheniia Motorevska leads the War Crimes Investigations Unit of the Kyiv Independent. She has been working in investigative journalism for over eight years. She has previously served as the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske and headed the video department of the investigative journalism agency Slidstvo.Info. Prior to the onset of the full-scale war, she had been investigating corruption and abuse of power within the judicial and law enforcement systems.
Yevheniia Motorevska
