The evacuation of museums in the Donetsk region has been ongoing for four years and has covered only half of them
In the Donetsk region, after four years of full-scale war, artifacts have been evacuated from only half of the museums that were operating prior to 2022. Part of the collections has been saved, but a significant amount of cultural heritage remains in occupied and frontline territories under constant threat of destruction. Viktoria Tochena, head of the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Donetsk Regional State Administration, told journalists about this.
The war in Donetsk Oblast has struck not only the cities and people but also the region’s cultural memory, which is slowly being moved out of danger and just as slowly disappearing amid shelling, destruction, and occupation. According to regional authorities, of the 32 municipal museums that were operating before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, exhibits and archives have been successfully evacuated from only 16 institutions.
Viktoria Tochena, head of the Department of Culture and Tourism at the Donetsk Regional State Administration, told reporters this, noting that the evacuation process is difficult and uneven, as some areas remain under constant shelling or occupation.
According to her, museums in cities that remained under Ukrainian control for longer were the most fortunate, particularly those in Bakhmut, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Pokrovsk, Toretsk, Avdiivka, and Maryinka, where it was possible to preserve part of the collections and transport them to safer regions. “We managed to remove about 60–70% of the museum collections from Bakhmut, including archival materials,” Tochena noted, emphasizing that even the partial preservation of the collections was the result of urgent and often risky evacuations.
The most critical situation arose in Mariupol, where, due to the blockade and occupation, not a single exhibit from the nine museums could be evacuated, and all collections remained in the occupied territory.
As of May 2026, according to official data, 18 of the 32 museums in the Donetsk region are located in temporarily occupied territory, which effectively makes it impossible to access their collections and monitor the preservation of the exhibits.
It is also noted that Russian troops continue to destroy museum infrastructure: specifically, in the village of Neskuchne, the Nemirovich-Danchenko Memorial Museum-Estate was destroyed, marking yet another loss of the region’s cultural heritage.
There are 14 museums remaining in territory controlled by Ukraine, but even they are not operating under safe conditions: seven of them are located in an active combat zone, and another seven are in a zone of potential threat. The buildings regularly sustain damage from shelling, which poses risks both to staff and to the exhibits that remain on site.
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