KYIV: In a dark hall of Kyiv’s Holodomor museum, four men were carefully lifting the protective glass cases off robes, icons, books and metal agricultural tools.
The items are a memory to the millions that perished in the 1932-33 manmade famine under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, which many in Ukraine and around the world call a genocide.
But with Russia stepping up its attacks on Ukrainian cultural and historic sites, the museum is just one institution fearful it could be targeted — and is now packing up and relocating its collections.
“As the experience of recent weeks has shown, Russia is deliberately striking sites connected to cultural heritage and cultural institutions,” the museum’s deputy general director, Olga Melnyk, told AFP.
Most of the pieces being relocated to “safer locations” are family heirlooms from victims of the famine, passed down through generations — often at personal risk during the Soviet era — Melnyk explained.
