The Russia Report

Issue 224

From the editor: Ukrainians battle for cultural heritage

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 intensified the country’s determination to decolonise itself and eliminate all traces of Russian presence. But now cultural figures in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa and prominent supporters around the world say the process is going too far, potentially destroying priceless world heritage. They have written an open letter to UNESCO with an urgent appeal to its leadership to ask Volodymyr Zelensky to postpone decisions about the removal of monuments and names of prominent Odesans from the city’s squares and streets until after the war, when expert inquiry and public consultations can take place.

The statue of Ukrainian Jewish writer Isaac Babel in Odesa. Photo: Serge Poliakov

UNESCO designated the historic centre of Odesa as a World Heritage Site in Danger in January 2023. This was something that First Lady Olena Zelenska had lobbied for. In November last year at the UNESCO General Conference in Paris she thanked the organisation for extending protections to Odesa, Kyiv and Lviv, and for documenting damage from Russian attacks. “A few days before my visit here, on November 5, as usual, Russian troops attacked Odesa at night. The shelling damaged the building of the Odesa National Art Museum,” she said. “The news about culture in Ukraine is mostly like this now. A theatre in Chernihiv, and before that the historic centre of Lviv, Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral - again in Odesa - and before that dozens of other sites of our cultural heritage. Museums, libraries, theaters, galleries... More than 1,700 cultural sites have been damaged over the past year and a half.”

The signatories of the letter to UNESCO fear that the same sites are also threatened by Ukraine itself as a result of a post-invasion law “On the condemnation and prohibition of propaganda of Russian imperial policy in Ukraine and decolonisation of toponymy,” whose stated aim is to “protect Ukraine’s cultural and informational space” by “liquidating symbols of Russian imperial politics.” This summer, without any consultation, Odesa’s regional administration renamed dozens of streets and earmarked 19 monuments for removal, while depriving others of protected status. The figures they commemorate include some of the greatest Odesans, according to the letter: “…not only those who built and defended Odesa, but also those of opponents and victims of the Russian imperial and Soviet regimes. Among them are Scottish administrator Thomas Cobley who fought the plague in Odesa in 1812, Marshal Malinovsky who defended the city from Nazi troops, Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin, who condemned the Soviet regime in his writings, Nobel nominee Konstantin Paustovsky, who criticised the Soviet Revolution and was never even a member of the Communist Party, Alexander Pushkin, who was exiled to Odesa for anti-tsarist activities, and Odesa’s most famous writer Isaac Babel, who perished in Stalin’s purges.”

The letter has been signed by 126 people so far, including current and former personnel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, such as Alexander Babich, who is also a historian; internationally renowned poet Ilya Kaminsky; author of books on the region Thomas de Waal; Andrii Murza – founder and director of the Odesa International Violin Competition – and Steven J. Zipperstein, author of The Jews of Odesa.

In December 2022 the Monument to the Founders of Odesa, with Catherine II at its centre, was removed and dismantled. The monument was originally erected in 1900 with the help of the Italian sculptor Leopoldo Menzione, and featured, along with the German-born 18^th-century Russian Empress, Odesa’s Neapolitan, Dutch and Russian founders. It was a reminder of Odesa’s cosmopolitanism and, according to political anthropologist Anastasia Piliavsky, the letter’s co-author, Catherine was never revered by Odesans. They referred to her mockingly as “Katka” – a massive woman with four small men at her feet (most by legend her lovers). “For Odesans, who are dismissive of tsars or any kind of political authority, she was never a symbol of the Russian Empire,” she told me in a WhatsApp call.

The founders were restored to one of Odesa’s most charming squares in 2007 after the original statue was removed in 1920 under Lenin’s “monumental propaganda” programme. Under the Soviets the plinth was variously occupied by a bust of Marx and hammer and sickle, standing empty in 1941-44 when the city was occupied by the Romanians, only to be replaced by the Potemkin sailors who mutinied in 1905 in the late Soviet years. To most Odesans, the return of the founders originally signified freedom from Soviet propaganda, not subjugation to Russian imperialism. “With this century-long monumental circus around the plinth, the monument came to signify the ebb and flow of political regimes, in all its hilarity,” Piliavsky says. 

Today a few figures on the far right in Odesa ironically have adopted Vladimir Putin’s narrative that anything related to the Russian language is Russian, and have issued threats to the letter’s signatories, who oppose the erasure of famous Odesans from public memory, simply because they spoke Russian. Demyan Ganul, former leader of the Right Sector “power bloc” in the city, wrote on Facebook about the UNESCO letter’s signatories: “This is a list of those vatniks who oppose the renaming of streets in honour of fallen heroes and are for the preservation of Russian monuments in Odesa.” “Vatnik” is a derogatory term for latent supporters of Russia. “Remember these names, these are scoundrels who hold on to Russia, who deliberately drag the Russian world to Odesa,” he added.

The “scoundrels” include Alexander Onishchenko, a theatre director who has been fighting in the Ukrainian Armed Forces since February 2022; Dmytro Dokunov, a digital artist who liberated Kherson and now, after being shellshocked repeatedly, is building a rehabilitation centre for veterans; and Eugene Demenok, who has helped hundreds of refugees find homes in Europe. Piliavsky herself has raised more than $1 million for Ukrainian refugees and the armed forces.

Another of the letter’s signatories, Odesa-based chess grandmaster Mikhail Golubev, has campaigned against Russia for years and was one of the organisers of Odesa’s Euromaidan in 2014. In a message on X he told me that opponents of the letter’s aims are waging а linguistic culture war against people like himself, Russian-speaking Ukrainians. “Such people hoped that Russian-speaking patriots of Ukraine will not defend their fundamental rights, but we are doing this,” he wrote. “Our fight is the fight against the destructive, divisive linguistic culture wars, which gained momentum in reaction to the trauma of Russia’s invasion and need to be reconsidered to preserve our democracy, before it’s too late.”

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Putin rages against Ukraine at BRICS summit

Vladimir Putin has hosted a BRICS summit in Kazan, which was attended by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to the dismay of Ukrainians. Despite the fact that Guterres reportedly told Putin that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is in violation of the UN Charter and international law, he was seen enjoying a traditional offering of bread and hugging Belarus’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Putin is unable to travel to some of the BRICS countries because they would be obliged to arrest him under the ICC arrest warrant that was issued in relation to his deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Putin’s comments on Ukraine at the summit were as hostile as usual. “Ukraine is used to create critical threats to Russia, ignoring our vital interests and concerns,” he said. “The rights of Russian speakers are suppressed, and now they don’t even hide the goal of dealing a strategic defeat to our country. I will say directly these are false calculations that can only be done by those who don’t know Russia’s history or take into account the centuries-long unity and strength of our people.”

Responding to reports that thousands of North Korean troops have arrived in Russia in preparation to fight in Ukraine, Putin said, “When we have to decide something, we will decide... but it is our sovereign decision whether we will apply it, whether we will not, whether we need it. This is our business.”

Moldova and Georgia struggle against Russian influence in elections

Moldovans voted on Sunday by the narrowest of margins, 50.38 percent to 49.62 percent, to endorse a proposed change to the country’s constitution to support membership of the European Union. The referendum campaign and first round of the presidential election, in which incumbent Maia Sandu was ahead against her pro-Russian rival Alexandr Stoianoglo, was marred by allegations of interference by pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor. Some voters admitted they came from the Russian-occupied region of Transnistria and were paid to vote a certain way. The second round of the presidential election is set to take place on Nov. 3.

In Tbilisi a large pro-EU demonstration took place on Sunday evening ahead of parliamentary elections tomorrow. The ruling Georgian Dream party recently passed laws similar to Russia’s forcing NGOs to register as foreign agents and criminalising “LGBT propaganda”. Researchers in Georgia working for US think tank the Atlantic Council had their homes searched this week.

Ukraine claims it killed Russian air force commander with hammer  

Ukraine has claimed responsibility for the killing of a Russian air force commander who was allegedly responsible for a missile attack on a shopping centre in Kremenchuk, Poltava Oblast in June 2022 that killed 22 people, as well as an attack on a block of flats in Dnipro last year that killed 46 people. Col. Dmitri Golenkov, a senior officer in Russia’s 52^nd heavy bomber regiment, was found dead in the village of Suponevo in Bryansk Oblast, his head bludgeoned by a hammer. Ukraine’s military intelligence said it had killed Golenkov with the “hammer of justice”.

Russia kills three family members in Sumy, more POW executions investigated

A Russian drone hit a house in Sumy on Monday night, injuring a 50-year-old man and killing his 50-year-old wife, his 62-year-old sister and his 14-year-old daughter. The father survived because he was in the yard at the time of the strike. The teenager, named as Anna Kushnarova, was shown in a video training her dog. A trainer called Oleksandra who also worked with Anna’s dog commented on her death: “She was a wonderfully cheerful child who desired results and sobbed when something did not work. However, we always found solutions and achieved results. I was devastated by the news… I have no words to explain my hatred of Russia.”

Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office has opened an investigation into another report of Russia executing POWs, this time four National Guard members who had been captured in Selydove, Donetsk Oblast.

Student gets 14 years in prison for recruiting office arson, mother and daughter arrested for United Russia fire

A military court in Vladivostok has sentenced 25-year-old student Alena Katorzhnykh to 14 years in prison for terrorism for her alleged participation in an arson attack on a military recruiting office in the city in September last year. Katorzhnykh pled guilty and told the court that someone from a Ukrainian website had paid her 48,000 roubles ($500) to commit the arson. Part of her sentence was due to a separate unspecified drugs charge. The arson attack only damaged a window of the building and the fire went out by itself. Katorzhnykh filmed while a local businessman, Manap Gulimzarov, started the fire.

In Perm a mother and daughter have been arrested for allegedly setting fire to the city’s offices of United Russia on Wednesday night. They reportedly threw Molotov cocktails at the building, breaking a window, and the building eventually burned down. The pair came to Perm from the village of Gayny.

War returnee kills neighbour after complaint over music

A man who fought in Ukraine has been arrested for allegedly stabbing a neighbour to death in the village of Zaprudnya, Moscow Oblast on Saturday evening. The 51-year-old ex-soldier was playing loud music in his flat and his 42-year-old neighbour came over to complain about it. The killer returned from the war last September and had been undergoing treatment for alcohol dependency and had faced previous misdemeanour charges.

Man who confessed to murder and mayor convicted of corruption to fight in Ukraine

The prosecution of a Tomsk Oblast man who confessed to murdering an acquaintance and dismembering his body in August has been dropped in favour of sending the killer to fight in Ukraine. The man had been drinking with his victim in the village of Berezkino. During an argument he strangled the acquaintance to death and removed the head from the body, leaving the head in a forest and throwing the body in a latrine. The man told investigators what he had done and showed them where he threw the head out of a vehicle. It became known this month that the prosecution was dropped a few days after the man’s arrest.

Meanwhile Igor Pushkarev, a former mayor of Vladivostok who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2019 in a corruption case, will also be released to fight in Ukraine. Investigators said that during his tenure as mayor in 2009 to 2015 Pushkarev accepted bribes totalling 75 million roubles ($785,000), and his relatives also obtained millions of dollars through fraudulent activities.

Household gas explosion kills five in Tambov Oblast

Five people died in a household gas explosion in Kirsanov, Tambov Oblast, on Sunday, and 16 others were injured. The dead included an 81-year-old woman and a young couple. The explosion destroyed the upper floors of a block of flats built in 1977, which reportedly was in compliance with regulations. There are frequent deadly household gas explosions in Russia and no action is taken to prevent such incidents.