Consequences of the War for Archaeological Heritage Sites on the Example of Archaeological Sites in Moshchun Village near Kyiv

Abstract

The Russian Federation has been destroying Ukrainian cultural heritage since 2014. A full-scale invasion by the Russians in February 2022 increased the scale of losses. The aggressor country must compensate for the damages caused to Ukraine. Documenting these losses is part of the process of restorative justice. Legal tools are an important part of the work of documenting destruction. Part of the article reveals legal aspects of such documentation.
Moshchun village, near Kyiv, became the territory of military confrontation. This area has suffered significant damage. Houses of local residents became ruins. Many traces of ammunition explosions covered the surrounding fields and forests. Part of the territory affected by the war is the area of archaeological sites. We reconstructed the course of the military conflict using public information to piece together the events of 2022. This revealed the process of destruction of archaeological sites. The collected information helped in the direct survey of archaeological sites.
The basis of the article is the data collected in the summer of 2023. Monitoring archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine surveyed seven archaeological sites. All surveyed objects have damage from military operations. The examined places form three groups: а) objects with traces of damage as a result of shelling with various ammunition; b) objects damaged by belligerent activity; с) objects whose status is unknown.
Monitoring of archaeological sites is impossible without representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The interaction of the executive authorities, scientific institutions and defense forces of Ukraine is a necessary condition for the deployment of the monitoring system of archaeological objects in the wartime conditions. The survey carried out by the authors of the article is only one of the ways of documenting the war crimes of the Russians against the world cultural heritage.