The latest strike on the former base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet sparked a full-blown “historic” drama among the occupiers. According to the local occupation governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the famous panorama museum Defense of Sevastopol 1854–1855 was virtually destroyed.
“The situation is extremely difficult,” he lamented. “It is already clear that Franz Roubaud’s great masterpiece has been practically destroyed.”
In reality, Roubaud’s original panorama was lost in a fire during World War II, in 1942. The work later presented as the celebrated “masterpiece” was in fact a Soviet reconstruction—a replica created in the 1950s. Yet while Razvozhayev was painting a picture of cultural apocalypse, museum staff themselves stepped forward to reassure the public that not everything had been destroyed. Clearly, communication remains a challenge.
The museum, of course, had no military significance. No one intentionally targeted it. Rather, the occupiers once again appear to have engaged a drone with such enthusiasm that the resulting debris found its way into the Roubaud panorama. Similar episodes of overzealous air-defense activity have already been reported across Russia, from Kaliningrad to Omsk.
