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The museum of local history in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium has, like the community around it, endured much since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of the country.<\/p>\n
When Izium was bitterly fought over in early 2022 at the start of the Russian assault, the 19th-century building suffered two direct hits from missiles that blew out the roof and led to flood damage. Under occupation from March to September 2022, a Russian guard was posted on the door \u2013 but invaders never transported its collection any deeper behind Russian lines, or found the rare early 18th-century volume of the gospels \u2013 one of only three of its type \u2013 that museum workers had spirited away and hidden.<\/p>\n
The museum is now back in Ukrainian hands but remains in a fragile, vulnerable state, uncomfortably close to the frontline and the threat of reoccupation. The roof is repaired, says the director, Halyna Ivanova, but there is no point re-glazing the windows while the city is hit night after night by missiles.<\/p>\n
The bulk of the collection has now been safely evacuated<\/a> and its precious volume of the gospels, which was also concealed from German invaders during the second world war when the museum and its collection were almost completely destroyed, is being conserved after its time in hiding.<\/p>\n Halyna Ivanova, the director of the museum of local history in Izium, showing modern art works presented at the museum. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At the moment, the institution is a kind of ghost museum. Its collection is absent; its doors are closed to the public because of the danger of attacks; and its community, whose collective memory it holds, has shrunk to half of its 40,000 pre-invasion number.<\/p>\n But there is still much work to do, says Ivanova. The museum staff now run walking tours of the city\u2019s shattered historical buildings. They host temporary exhibitions inside damaged rooms (\u201cloft style\u201d, she jokes, of the rough walls and improvised feel), even if its visitors are now confined to local military personnel and invited guests.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are trying preserve memories, to fix them,\u201d she says. \u201cTo show people how the city was before the war, what has happened to it \u2013 and how it looks now.\u201d<\/p>\n On display are paintings by local artists, and photography by soldiers stationed nearby, part of a nascent collection of audio, video and images from the military that the museum is amassing.<\/p>\n Map of eastern Ukraine, showing Russian-controlled areas, Izium, Sviatohirsk etc<\/a><\/p>\n One room holds a display devoted to significant local individuals. One is the murdered children\u2019s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko<\/a>, who buried his diary of life under occupation beneath a cherry tree in his village before being arrested and shot dead. Another is \u201ca firefighter who was also delivering aid around the city, who died as a result of a cluster bomb\u201d.<\/p>\n Ivanova says: \u201cHe was my neighbour and I knew him all his life; I saw him born and I saw him die.\u201d<\/p>\n She is also building a \u201cmuseum of occupation\u201d: collecting objects left by the invaders. \u201cSo there is proof of their presence here \u2013 and proof of the crimes they committed.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of this new collection is on display. There is part of a cluster munition rocket; the uniforms and helmets of Russians, as well as those from their proxy state, the so-called Donetsk People\u2019s Republic<\/a>; Russian ration packs and cigarettes \u2013 \u201cbrands I haven\u2019t seen since I smoked them 30 years ago before the fall of the Soviet Union\u201d, says Ivanova.<\/p>\n The objects of the Russian occupation of Izium and Kharkiv region at the museum of local history. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Antique-looking crutches and superannuated tourniquets attest to the out-of-date supplies of some of the invading army. There are aid packs branded as donated by the Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod; school textbooks for primary-age children showing Russia as the motherland and Moscow as \u201cthe capital of our country\u201d; and fragments of a stone-carved memorial erected to mark the grave of a Russian colonel \u201cthat shows\u201d, says Ivanova, \u201cthat they thought they were going to stay for ever\u201d.<\/p>\n Propaganda news sheets are on display, as is a photograph of a visit by a prominent Russian propagandist surrounded by local collaborators. \u201cOne is in Russia, one is being searched for by police here, and the two women are in prison,\u201d says Ivanova.<\/p>\n There is evidence of some bleak humour: a homemade Russian medal crudely carved from a piece of wood and awarded \u201cfor all this shit\u201d.<\/p>\n The view over the Sviatohirsk Lavra monastery and the Artyom monument on the hill. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The Izium museum is not the only such institution to be in a vulnerable position. Farther south, in the Donetsk region, lies the great monastery complex of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, rising dramatically up from the cliffs above the Siverskyi Donets River.<\/p>\n The site, which has medieval origins, is shared between monks and nuns of the Ukrainian Orthodox church and has a museum run by the Ukrainian state. (The church, which has historic ties to Moscow, declared its formal separation from the Russian Orthodox church in 2022, though many observers consider the separation incomplete or ambiguous.)<\/p>\n Displaced people are living in buildings that form part of the estate, some of whom have been here since 2014, when the conflict first broke out in the region.<\/p>\n Yaroslava Diedova, deputy director of the museum, at the monastery of Sviatohirsk Lavra. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Yaroslava Diedova, the museum\u2019s deputy director, lost her boss to the Russian invaders. The director and her family were killed when their car was hit by a missile as they tried to evacuate.<\/p>\n Four monks were also killed when a missile smashed into one of the monastery\u2019s accommodation blocks in March 2022, and three construction workers died in a later attack, says the monastery\u2019s Fr Trofim.<\/p>\n A monk before an Orthodox icon of a saint at Sviatohirsk Lavra monastery. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n