A bearded expert and a group of Ukrainian soldiers arrived in the village of Slovianka on a special mission. Their goal did not involve shooting at invading Russian forces. Instead, they had come to rescue a unique piece of history before it could be swallowed up by war and a frontline creeping closer.<\/p>\n
The soldiers placed a giant object on a wooden pallet. It was a carved stone figure created about 800 years ago. The sculpture \u2013 of a woman holding a ceremonial pot, wearing a necklace and with tiny legs \u2013 was lifted gently on to a flatbed truck. \u201cWe didn\u2019t think we would have to evacuate it. But we do. It\u2019s sad,\u201d Yurii Fanyhin, who coordinated the operation, explained.<\/p>\n
Today Slovianka is a small farmland community, not far from the administrative border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, however, it was at the centre of a vast steppe route. A Turkic nomadic people \u2013 known as the Cumans or Polovtsy \u2013 flourished here, north of the Black Sea. They were formidable and skilled warriors.<\/p>\n
A collection of early medieval stone statues at the Dnipropetrovsk national historical museum. Photograph: Alessio Mamo\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Their world survives in the form of elaborate funerary statues known as babas, which once littered the landscape of southern Ukraine<\/a>. Each represents a dead individual. There are fighters depicted with weapons, helmets and belts. And \u2013 unusually for the early medieval period \u2013 there are many women. Some wear jewellery; one is pregnant; all have hair hidden under a hat.<\/p>\n In spring 2024, Fanyhin and his soldier-volunteers travelled to the under-fire city of Velyka Novosilka<\/a>, now under Russian occupation. They retrieved a sculpture hit by shrapnel. Other figures standing on a hill were damaged when the Russians seized the north-eastern city of Izium<\/a>. So far the team has rescued 11 babas. They have been transported west to Dnipro\u2019s national history museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n The museum has more than 100 Polovtsian sculptures. It is the world\u2019s biggest collection. Some are in good condition. Others \u2013 after centuries of rain and snow \u2013 have lost many of their features, their smooth heads and torsos reminiscent of abstract works by the 20th-century sculptor Henry Moore. The outside pavilion where they are kept recently lost some of its glass when a Russian missile landed nearby.<\/p>\n The museum\u2019s director, Oleksandr Starik<\/a>, said he was hopeful the British Museum or another international institution could help conserve and restore the statues. At a time of conflict, there was little Ukrainian government funding available for culture, he acknowledged. The babas were not only sacred national heritage but disproved the claim that Ukraine did not exist and was a part of \u201chistorical\u201d Russia, he said.<\/p>\n In 2022, Vladimir Putin used this false idea to justify his invasion. \u201cIt\u2019s important for Russia to show that only Slavs lived on this territory and no one else. In fact, the steppe was mixed. There were many different ethnicities,\u201d Starik said. \u201cOur task is to show that it\u2019s our ancestors who lived there. They were nomads who moved all the time and were not connected with the Russian imperium.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the statues, known as babas, up close. Photograph: Alessio Mamo\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The Cumans placed their statues on mounds, as close to the heavens as possible. According to Starik, the figures showed the boundaries of different tribes and were used as easy-to-spot steppe markers. The figures were seen as alive, and as a way of communicating with ancestors, in accordance with shamanist religious traditions. Sacrifices were carried out at the sites, Starik suggested.<\/p>\n Of Putin\u2019s attempted conquest of Ukraine, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s colonial politics. The empire doesn\u2019t work unless you seize new territory.\u201d He continued: \u201cIt was important for us to save the statues. The enemy doesn\u2019t care about them. The Russians are completely indifferent to the past. They keep smashing up our monuments using artillery and bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n Two of the babas were retrieved from the town of Mezhova<\/a>, now only 15km (9 miles) from the frontline, on the eastern edge of Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Earlier this month a Russian drone blew up a civilian minibus and a glide bomb destroyed the town\u2019s school. In 2014, statues were lost when Russia staged a covert part-takeover of the eastern Donbas region, seizing the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and their museum artefacts.<\/p>\n Yevhen Khrypun<\/a>, the editor of the local Mezhivskyi Merydian<\/a> newspaper, said the sculptures were fascinating because they were a concrete representation of a living person. \u201cThe idea that the Polovtsy are our ancestors is not very scientific, to be honest. Earlier we had Scythians<\/a>, Sarmatians and Cimmerians. It\u2019s more symbolic: these were all people who lived on our lands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Oleksandr Starik, the director of the Dnipropetrovsk national historical museum, with the collection. Photograph: Alessio Mamo\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Not everyone is happy to see the sculptures moved to safer areas. Last weekend, after the female baba was removed, the Slovianka village authorities filed a report with the police. They alleged the sculpture had been stolen. The convoy heading back to Dnipro was stopped for several hours while officers checked documents. \u201cIt was a crazy standoff. They blocked the road with a tractor,\u201d Fanyhin reported.<\/p>\n In some cases the statues are impossible to retrieve. One is located outside the city of Kostyantynivka, besieged by Russia. First-person-view drones cruise its streets, targeting any vehicle that moves. \u201cWe need help from the military to get it out. But no one wants to risk their life for a statue. I don\u2019t want to risk mine either,\u201d Fanyhin said.<\/p>\n The historian said the rescue missions had kept him sane, during a stressful period of war and loss. \u201cIn some way the babas saved us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe feel we are doing an important and even a great thing. It shows that Ukraine doesn\u2019t forget its cultural landmarks, even statues on the frontline. After our victory, they will be more valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bearded expert and a group of Ukrainian soldiers arrived in the village of Slovianka on a special…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-307155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114949101103284627","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}