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As Russian forces pound town with artillery and air strikes, workers on the important museum in Kharkiv are racing to get artworks to security, a lot of them by Russian artists.

The ornate, imposing constructing was nonetheless standing on Wednesday, not like some others in Kharkiv, however the home windows have been blown in by the blasts, plaster and mud cowl the flooring and the encompassing streets are coated in particles.

“There are over 25,000 items in our collection,” Kharkiv Art Museum’s head of overseas artwork, Maryna Filatova says, including it is without doubt one of the largest and most useful within the nation.

“It is simply irony of fate that we should be saving Russian artists, paintings by Russian artists from their own nation.”

Across Ukraine, thousands and thousands of individuals have fled the preventing whereas many extra are staying to repel the advancing Russian forces. As effectively as lives and infrastructure, some are attempting to save lots of Ukraine’s tradition and historical past.

In Odesa on the southern coast, a monument to Duc de Richelieu, a governor of town within the early nineteenth century, has been protected by sandbags piled across the plinth and statue as much as its shoulders.

“Workers, women that are still in town, we will work and do our best to save it all. We are taking the paintings down and will hide them,” Filatova says.

Reuters