This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women
on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with
the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
As the war in Ukraine drags into its fourth year, the attention of the world has been scattered between concurrent crises and genocides. Yet, a different kind of battlefield has been quietly playing out behind the scenes in the eastern European nation: a sustained fight for the survival of Ukraine’s cultural heritage. Amid blackouts, constant missile and drone strikes, and a requisite normalization of war, a grassroots network of museum workers, art curators and volunteers is carrying out a mission as vital to the nation’s future as the soldiers in the trenches: saving Ukraine’s cultural identity and heritage.
Since February 2022, more than 95,000 Russian and 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives and over 370,000 have been injured. While international news publications struggle to keep its audiences updated on the war’s human toll and military developments, even less attention has been paid to Russia’s intentional targeting of museums and other cultural hubs. This stems from a deeper history of Russification and the erasure of Ukrainian identity.
UNESCO has verified damage to at least 343 heritage sites across Ukraine, including historic churches, libraries and archives. Donetsk, Kharkiv and Odesa are among the hardest-hit regions. The financial burden of rebuilding the cultural and tourism sectors alone has been estimated at over $9 billion — an impossible sum for a country struggling to fund even its military salaries.
But amid the rubble, one determined organization has become a lifeline for Ukraine’s cultural continuity: Museum for Change.
Founded in 2017 by Oleksandra Kovalchuk, the former deputy director of the Odesa National Fine Arts Museum, the nonprofit was originally conceived to better connect and support regional museums and art institutions in Odesa, a major port city on the Black Sea. That mission changed dramatically with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“Since the war happened, we’ve been constantly overloaded,” Kovalchuk said. “It’s always
urgent. The situation is rapidly changing on the battlelines — we have to react to that. The
amount of cultural heritage that we’re working with is huge, somewhere between 12 to 20
million objects.”
From paintings and religious icons to centuries-old manuscripts and archaeological relics,
Ukraine’s artifacts have been hastily packed into crates, loaded onto trucks and relocated
from frontline cities to undisclosed locations of relative safety. It’s a logistical operation
comparable to military maneuvers — improvised, dangerous and nearly always underfunded. Imagine a medieval tapestry being ferried out of Kharkiv in the back of a civilian van, or a set of ancient coins packed hastily into a backpack as the shelling begins. That’s not a hypothetical scenario: it’s a grueling reality for Kovalchuk’s team.
Working alongside local authorities, UNESCO, and international donors such as the Alibh Foundation — whose $7.75 million donation has sustained many of their operations — Museum for Change has helped over 100 Ukrainian museums relocate and preserve more than 300,000 cultural items. The organization also supports dozens of displaced visual artists, many of whom were forced to flee from frontline cities including Kherson, Mariupol and Kharkiv.
This is a Sisyphian task.
“One part of Ukraine is constantly on the battle line, the other is not,” Kovalchuk said.
“We’re moving everything we can from east to west: imagine having 10 million objects under attack. Imagine the time, the labor, the care it takes to crate them and take them somewhere safe.”
This work is about survival, identity and the tangible components of being Ukrainian. “I
don’t want this to be another thing that Russia takes away from us,” said Catarina
Buchatskiy, a co-founder of the cultural Kyiv-based nonprofit Shadows Project. “Life [in
Ukraine] has never been normal,” Their destruction is not accidental collateral damage—it is often targeted, part of an ongoing campaign to erase Ukrainian sovereignty and memory.
“Culture is not a luxury,” Kovalchuk insists. “It is a form of resistance.”
This philosophy mirrors the taxing resistance against the psychological tolls of war.
Museums and cultural centers have become sanctuaries that have taken on a different societal weight for the millions of Ukrainians who must survive in a war zone.
Funding has always been an issue, another challenge amplified by the war. “Cultural heritage always takes a backseat,” Kovalchuk admits. “But our organization will have to continue working, even after the war is over — putting things back [together] is a big task.”
Many Ukrainians working in the art world are sympathetic to the prioritization of military
economic aid. Yulia Vaganova, the director of Khanenko Museum in Kyiv, said they no
longer run private donation campaigns. “We don’t want to burden the people. We understand it’s better for money to go to the army. The ethical stance is that the military is more important, which is why [Khanenko] pivoted to external grants and sources.”
Yet, cultural heritage — be it in art, dance, monuments, mosaics or other mediums — may be foundational to the long-term recovery of Ukrainian society, whenever the war is over.
Rebuilding homes and infrastructure will be vital. Holding on to memory, pride and a sense of collective purpose may prevent Ukraine from becoming a nation defined by its survival and wars.
“As long as Russia is a whole, there will always be a threat,” Kovalchuk said. “That’s why
we keep going. To preserve what cannot be remade.”
For Ukraine, victory will manifest in not only liberated land, but in the resilience of its
soul — etched in its art, archived in its museums and protected by those who refuse to let their history burn.
Support for cultural recovery in Ukraine is ongoing. Museum for Change accepts
international donations to help protect, preserve and support Ukrainian art and artists in
crisis.
Kang-Chun Cheng is a Taiwanese American photojournalist from New Hampshire and based in Nairobi, Kenya for five years, covering the environment, foreign aid, and outdoor adventure. Her upbringing in West Lebanon fostered a deep love for the outdoors. She graduated from Dartmouth college in 2017, where she studied environmental sciences and studio art.