According to UNESCO, at least 295 Ukrainian cultural sites have been damaged or destroyed since the war started, while Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture puts that number at a far less conservative 763.
Russian troops have been regularly attacking not only military targets, but also civilian ones such as museums, monuments, and churches. Drawing up an authoritative list of Ukraine’s most culturally significant architectural losses is hard, says Zaporizhia-based historian Pavlo Kravchuk, pointing out that such evaluations are inevitably subjective.
For now it’s also impossible to calculate how much the destruction has cost Ukraine financially, Kravchuk says, as evaluating the damage can only be done by teams of professionals on the ground, and at least half of all the affected historic sites in Ukraine remain inaccessible due to continued fighting.
The greatest loss to consider though is the intangible cultural value of the damaged buildings, Kravchuk says, noting that no amount of money can bring them back. “Behind every object are not just building materials, but memories as well — memories belonging to people who lived in these buildings or nearby, and whose lives were destroyed.”
In the absence of standardised criteria for ranking the importance of historic buildings in Ukraine, the following are some of the greatest losses to the country’s architectural heritage since the war began.