Analysis of Russian attacks on Ukrainian cultural heritage in Kyiv

CONTENT WARNING

Please be aware that this investigation includes highly graphic and sensitive content, including documentation of injured and deceased victims of the strike. Where appropriate, the content has been labeled “graphic.”

Introduction

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has brought human rights violations including mass bombardment of Ukrainian cities, ecological catastrophes such as the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, targeting of Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure, and the arbitrary and extrajudicial detention, torture, and killings of Ukrainian civilians. The intensity and varied nature of the incidents has resulted in an understandable focus on incidents with a high casualty count and ones where the physical destruction will have long-term impacts. This focus has sidelined one of Russia’s major stated goals for the war: the destruction of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian people as a nation.

In his televised address in which he announced the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Russian President Putin declared that one of the goals of the invasion was the “denazification” of Ukraine. To a foreign audience, most recently in his interview with Tucker Carlson, Putin has explained this term as the “prohibition of fascist symbols and ideology.” While he did not specify what symbols and ideologies he meant, it should be noted that displaying symbols associated with the Nazi regime has been forbidden under Ukrainian law since before the 2022 invasion. However, in Russian the word “denazification” (денацификация) has a different connotation. In Russian the word “Nazi” (нацист - natsіst) is usually only used in an academic context, instead Nazis are more commonly referred to as “fashisty” (фашисты) or fascists. However, the word “nation” (нация - natsіya), as used to describe a group of people with a shared cultural/linguistic heritage, is in the common parlance. Therefore, in Russian the term denazification is not readily associated with removing Nazis or fascists, it is instead associated with making something not a nation anymore, in this case Ukrainians.

The Russian meaning of the word is much more consistent with how Russia has prosecuted this war. Ukrainian symbols of state, Ukrainian language, culture, and historical sites are being systemically destroyed. Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia and current deputy chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, has called for the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation explicitly on his official Telegram Channel and stated that it is the principal objective of the war: “Changing the  lie-filled consciousness of a portion of today’s Ukrainians is the most important objective of [the invasion].” Guests and hosts of major state-run television programmes have called for acts like killing Ukrainian children, and have called Ukrainians “second-class humans.” Although often overlooked, this aspect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is akin to physical destruction, because they are both key elements of the same objective – to destroy Ukraine as a country and erase Ukrainians as a people through forced assimilation, terror, and violence.

On 10 October 2022, several waves of missile strikes were launched at targets in Kyiv. The first wave of these strikes, which began at or shortly before 08:22 local time, struck cultural heritage sites which had no apparent military presence or military strategic value. As a result of these attacks, five people lost their lives, dozens were injured, and sites in historic central Kyiv were damaged. Later waves of strikes on the same day hit military and civilian infrastructure in Kyiv. This investigation focuses on the attacks impacting Kyiv’s cultural heritage sites and examines attacks on cultural heritage sites as a part of the Russian Federation’s broader strategy to target all aspects of Ukrainian statehood, identity, and history. 

Methodology

This investigation examines a variety of open-source documentation pertaining to alleged attacks affecting several sites in central Kyiv, on 10 October 2022, during the eighth month of the full scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation and its proxies. Analysis of these materials was conducted by cross-referencing a combination of open-source visual content and publicly available information. Specific methodologies are described in greater detail on the Methods section of Ukrainian Archive’s website.

This investigation was also undertaken with an awareness of international humanitarian law, which imposes limits to how parties to a conflict may conduct hostilities, and under which civilians and civilian objects – including in particular hospitals, medical personnel, and objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population – are protected. If proved, actions that violate these protections may constitute war crimes and human rights violations.

Through collection, verification, and analysis of the investigative findings from these incidents, Ukrainian Archive hopes to preserve critical information that may be used for advocacy purposes or as evidence in future legal proceedings seeking accountability.

Data ethics

Ukrainian Archive has strived to incorporate a risk minimisation ethical framework into their processes, which seeks to avoid causing any harm to victims and witnesses of a given incident. Harm, as defined in the Berkeley Protocol, consists of “physical or mental damage or injury to assets or the destruction thereof. It may involve digital, financial, legal, physical, psychosocial or reputational harm.” Due to the repeated targeting of hospitals, medical facilities, and medical personnel since 2014, particularly by Russian-backed “Donetsk/Luhansk People’s Republics” (hereafter “D/LNR”) “people’s militias” and by Russian Federation armed forces, additional precautions and ethical issues were taken into consideration during the drafting of this investigation.

The Ukrainian Archive supports transitional justice as without accountability sustainable peace is very difficult to achieve. In order to help establish that digital content is what it purports to be, rigorous verification steps, guided by the Berkeley Protocol, were taken to authenticate the  findings of this investigation.

Background on the impacted area

The two cultural heritage sites impacted on the morning of 10 October 2022 are Taras Shevchenko Park, where two missiles struck near the Taras Shevchenko and Mykhaylo Hrushevskyi monuments, and the pedestrian bridge over St. Volodymyr’s Descent.

Taras Shevchenko Park is located in central Kyiv and is close to many of the city’s famous landmarks including the Taras Shevchenko National University, the Khanenko Gallery, the Taras Shevchenko memorial, Taras Shevchenko Museum, the Mykhaylo Hrushevskyi Monument, and the Ministry of Education. The park was founded in 1860 as the University Square. The first statue in the center of the park was to Tsar Nikolai I and was erected in 1896, but torn down in 1920 after Kyiv was captured by the Bolsheviks. In 1938, it was replaced by a statue of Taras Shevechnko—Ukraine’s most prominent poet—whose writing had an immense impact on Ukrainian national identity and the Ukrainian language itself. Notably, the Taras Shevchenko monument is located less than 100 meters from the Red Building of the Taras Shevchenko National University, named so for the distinctive red color which had been used to paint its facade since the building opened in 1843. During the Khrushchev Thaw - a period of relative liberalization in the USSR from 1956 to the mid 1960s - Ukrainian dissidents gathered there to protest the marginalization and erasure of Ukrainian language and culture in the USSR. The statue of Taras Shevchenko, along with the statue of Mykhaylo Hrushevskyi, Ukraine’s president during the short-lived 1917-1921 Ukrainian People’s Republic, are the closest objects of significance to the impact locations, although it is difficult to say if they were the intended targets of the attack.

The Pedestrian Bridge over St. Volodymyr’s Descent is a much newer landmark, and is one of the signature projects of Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klychko. It was opened by Klychko himself on 25 May 2019. It connects Kyiv’s Khreshchatyi Park and St. Volodymyr’s Hill, spanning a valley between the two areas. Two prominent landmarks sit on either end of the bridge. The first is the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People, which opened during Soviet rule in 1982 to mark the 1500-year anniversary of the founding of Kyiv, and was known as the Arch of the Friendship of the Peoples until it was officially renamed on 14 May 2022. The location offers panoramic views of Kyiv and is popular with tourists. The second landmark is an 1853 statue of St. Volodymyr (the Great) who is best known for converting the Kyivan Rus to Christianity in 988.

What happened and when?

Summary of online reporting

News of the attack appeared on Ukrainian media outlets almost immediately after it took place; major news outlets TSN, Ukrayinska Pravda, and Espresso reported on the incident immediately after it occurred, with the earliest report by Ukrayinska Pravda arriving approximately five minutes after the strikes at 08:27 local time. Russian state-owned media, such as RIA Novosti, also began reporting about blasts in Kyiv within an hour of the attack, citing Ukrainian officials. A few hours after the attack, which was part of a broader bombardment of Ukraine on that day, Russian media, including RBK, another pro-Kremlin publication, broadcast a video in which Putin strongly implied that the strikes were in retaliation for Ukraine’s earlier attacks on the Crimean Bridge. English-language media—including CNN, CBS, and the BBC—all also reported on this as a likely motivation for the attacks.

Geolocation

Taras Shevchenko Park and the newly-built pedestrian bridge are both located in the historic center of Kyiv. The park is located in the eponymous Shevchenko District at coordinates 50.441, 30.513, and the bridge in the Podil District at coordinates 50.455, 30.528.

Taras Shevchenko Park

Two impact points were recorded in the vicinity of the park: one inside the park itself and another on an adjacent intersection between Taras Shevchenko Boulevard and Volodymyrska Street. The impact point in the park was geolocated to 50.4416, 30.5140. In an article posted by the news outlet Suspilne on 12 October 2022, an image is available which shows the impact point on a playground with the Taras Shevchenko Monument (with protective scaffolding) and the Red Building of the university visible in the background.

These images are taken from slightly different vantage points, identified on the map below.

The impact point on the intersection was geolocated to coordinates 50.4437, 30.5123 using a video posted by Kyiv mayor Vitalii Klychko, in which he discusses the aftermath of the strike, while standing next to a crater left behind by the munition. When compared to a Google Street View image from 2015, three unique identifying markers can be observed: the building behind and to the right of Klychko, which is the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (the closest building to the impact point); the tall building visible beyond the Ministry of Education, which is the Hilton Kyiv hotel; and a fence, which has a distinctive design pattern and is located in identical surroundings.

Pedestrian Bridge

The strike near the pedestrian bridge was captured by CCTV cameras on the bridge and circulated widely by official Ukrainian government Telegram accounts. A frame-by-frame analysis of the video shows that the blast which engulfs the bridge at second 0:14 originates from the ground beneath the bridge itself.

A video posted by Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klychko to his Telegram channel several hours after the attack shows the aftermath of the strike on the bridge and the location of the crater caused by that strike. At 0:43 Klychko approaches a section of the bridge where the railing has been damaged, with the Arch and the National Symphonic Orchestra building visible in the background.

Klychko then pans the camera around the crater, providing the clearest view at second 0:51. The crater is in the middle of a road, to the left is a fork in the road, and the stretch of road between the crater and the fork has protective walls around it.

The content of the video compared to a 2024 satellite image by Maxar, found on Google Earth Pro, shows a stretch of road at coordinates 50.4549, 30.5283 consistent with the location of the crater.

Chronolocation

Footage of the moment of the strikes around Shevchenko Park could not be found. A multitude of reports on the attack from 10 October 2022 state that the strikes hit in rapid succession. Ukrainian news outlets TSN, Ukrayinska Pravda, and Espresso reported all three impacts at once, indicating that if the impacts were not simultaneous, they were so close together that there was not enough time for separate reports to emerge, or for separate warnings to be issued. Therefore, the strikes near Shevchenko Park and near the pedestrian bridge likely occurred around 08:18 local time on 10 October 2022.

The exact time of the strike near the bridge can be determined from footage of the incident. The CCTV footage of the strike contains a timestamp in the upper left corner, which places the strike at 08:18 local time on 10 October 2022. This is consistent with the earliest news report about the incident by Ukrayinska Pravda, which published a notification at 08:26. No reports of other strikes near the bridge have been found, ruling out the possibility of the footage being from a different attack.

The timestamp on the CCTV footage was corroborated using SunCalc, a tool which can accurately provide the position of the sun at any given time, date, and place. When the time displayed in the timestamp (10 October 2022 08:18:47) and the relevant location are entered into the tool, it provides a position for the sun similar to the one in the CCTV footage. Therefore, we are confident that the timestamp on the CCTV footage is accurate.

Victims of the attacks

There were both fatalities and injuries resulting from the strikes on 10 October 2022. According to Mayor Klychko, the total number of casualties was five fatalities and 51 wounded. However this data may include both strikes covered in this investigation, as well as others later in the day, which did not impact cultural heritage sites. Searching through open-source reports, Ukrainian Archive was able to confirm the deaths of at least three people in or near Shevchenko Park. They were a 41-year-old police colonel, a pediatric surgeon, and a telecommunications worker, who are all reported to have been killed on or near the intersection adjacent to Taras Shevchenko park. Images posted by Ukrainian emergency services show at least one deceased person lying in the street [WARNING: GRAPHIC]. No information of fatalities at either of the two blast sites was found. Information on those injured in the attacks is not included in this report to protect the victims’ privacy.

Damage

Shevchenko Park

Two missiles struck in and just outside of Shevchenko Park. One strike impacted a playground in the park itself, while the second strike impacted a nearby road intersection. The strike on the playground created a crater several meters deep, and damaged the brick wall that surrounds the perimeter of the park in that area. A video from ICTV, taken in the immediate aftermath of the strike, shows a crater on the edge of the park’s playground, with debris from the blast strewn about. At 0:12 in the video, a damaged light-colored car is shown and the windows of at least one nearby building are also broken. At 0:42, the video shows the crater from up close. Other footage also shows damaged cars, but  contains images of human remains, which were not included in this report. Ukrainian Archive has preserved these records to share with justice actors on request. A state ecological commission determined the damages to the park to total 2.25 million UAH (67,000 USD), however this figure does not include the damage to nearby buildings, municipal infrastructure, or private and personal property.

The impact on the intersection of Taras Shevchenko Boulevard and Volodymyrska Street created a crater in the intersection. On the day of the attacks, Klychko posted a video of himself standing at the edge of the crater, along with a photo of the crater up close. The following day he uploaded an image of the intersection with the crater patched. The speed of the repair supports the assertion that these roads are major thoroughfares in central Kyiv.

In addition to damage to the intersection, a number of vehicles are shown burning in an image [WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT] shared by the Ukrainian Emergency services.

The damage to the pedestrian bridge was substantial, with repairs taking until 17 December 2022. An independent investigation carried out by the corruption watchdog group Dozorro determined that the municipal government of Kyiv spent approximately 6.9 million UAH ($175,000) on repairs to the bridge. The physical damage caused by the impact near the pedestrian bridge created a crater on a two-lane road running parallel to the bridge. Publicly available data regarding the repair cost of the road could not be found. The bridge was reopened on 17 December 2022.

Potentially responsible

In a televised address given hours after the strikes, Putin stated that by attacking the Crimean Bridge on 08 October 2022 “the actions of the Kyiv regime place it among the ranks of international terrorist organizations.” He then said that the attacks on 10 October were recommended to him by the Ministry of Defense, and that he then gave the order to carry them out. In light of this admission, this address indicates that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Armed Forces were responsible for these attacks. Putin claimed these strikes targeted military sites, communications, and logistics. 

Munitions used

In October 2022 Kyiv was well outside of the range of conventional artillery and rocket propelled artillery available at the time, with the nearest Russian forces having been pushed back to the internationally recognized Russo-Ukrainian border. Furthermore, all of Kyiv’s neighboring oblasts were also completely free of Russian troops, with the closest Russian-held territory around 90 km north of Kyiv. This rules out conventional artillery, since the farthest reaching known artillery munition in service—at the time of the attack—with the Russian armed forces is the 203-mm shell for the 2A44 howitzer, a gun mounted on the 2S7 “Pion” self-propelled howitzer that has a maximum range of 37.4 km. An airstrike is unlikely given the types of operations Russia’s air force was engaged in at the time. A Forbes article from 12 September 2022 reports the Russian air force as “sitting out the current campaign.” Although Russia used its aircraft for strikes deep inside Ukrainian territory early in the war, this was abandoned early in the invasion after failing to establish air superiority.

Another possible weapon type, within range of Kyiv, is the 9K515 “Tornado-S”. It is the only multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) in service within the Russian military, reportedly capable of reaching Kyiv on 10 October 2022, with a reported range of 120 km. This range can only be achieved using the new 9M544 projectile, which delivers a payload of smaller bomblets, designed to strike multiple targets, and does not cause a blast crater. This design is inconsistent with the damage seen at all three blast sites. Furthermore, a photo of the disassembled missile components does not contain any objects which resemble the components seen in Klychko’s video. It seems thus unlikely this weapon was used.

A more likely possibility are strikes by either a cruise missile or a ballistic missile, which Russia has reportedly used heavily throughout the conflict. The spokesperson of Ukraine’s Air Force, Yurii Ihnat, reported on 21 December 2023 that Russia had fired 7,400 missiles at Ukraine since 24 February 2022. There are several pieces of information that indicate that at least one projectile in this attack was a missile. The first comes from a BBC live broadcast on the morning of the strikes, which captured the apparent sound of a jet engine growing louder from 0:10-0:12, followed immediately by the sound of an apparent explosion, causing the journalist on the broadcast to take cover. The apparent sound of a jet engine cannot be heard after the reported explosion, which suggests that the sound may not have come from an aircraft, but from the projectile which may have caused the blast.

The second piece of information pointing to a cruise missile being used in the attack is the alleged remnants of a cruise missile, which were found at the intersection near Shevchenko Park. Klychko posted a picture of the alleged remnants of a missile to his Telegram channel. The remnants include a circular object with grooves, which bears a close resemblance to the turbine of a 3M54-1 Kalibr cruise missile.

Given these findings, a conventional artillery strike can be ruled out, an airstrike would be inconsistent with the apparent audio available in media posted online as well as Russian air force activity at the time, and an MLRS strike is unlikely due to the type of damage observed and the types of debris identified. The most likely munition used in the attack, consistent with the apparent audio of the missile and the blast, the type of damage caused, and the debris located, is a cruise missile. The precise type of cruise missile cannot be identified due to the poor condition of the missile remnants from the 10 October 2022 strikes.

Attacks on Cultural Heritage Sites

None of the images or footage of the sites contain any military equipment, nor is there a significant military presence visible in the available footage and images of the aftermath of the strikes. 

By contrast, the areas are saturated with important cultural, national, and historic sites threatened by the strikes. The Taras Shevchenko University, the Ministry of Education and Science, the M. Maksymovych Scientific Library, Kyiv City Clinical Hospital No.8, the National Picture Gallery, the Khanenko Museum, the Taras Shevchenko Monument, the Kyiv Institute of Philology, and the Mykhaylo Hrushevskyi Monument are all situated within 100 meters of the impact sites in addition to the symbolic Arch of the Freedom of the Ukrainian People and pedestrian bridge.

Attacks on Ukraine’s cultural heritage sites have been a constant throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine which began on 24 February 2022. UNESCO calculated that “As of 4 September 2024 UNESCO has verified damage to 438 sites since 24 February 2022 – 142 religious sites, 215 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 32 museums, 32 monuments, 16 libraries, 1 archive.” As with all verified totals, the true numbers may be higher as those incidents still undergoing verification are not counted. These attacks are also consistent with the rhetoric of top Russian officials about the alleged fictitiousness of Ukraine and its culture. Dmitry Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s National Defense Council, former president and prime minister of Russia, wrote on his Telegram account that “...deep down ‘Ukrainianness’ is all one giant lie fed by anti-Russian poison and pervasive untruths. It never existed before. And it won’t exist now.”

President Putin penned an essay on the “unity of the Ukrainian and Russian people” in July 2021, less than a year prior to the invasion. In this essay he also argued that Ukraine is simply an entirely artificial creation of the Soviet state: “… modern Ukraine is entirely a product of the Soviet era. We know and remember that for the most part it was created from historically Russian lands. Just compare the lands with which became part of the Russian state in the XVII century to the lands that the Ukrainian SSR took when it left the USSR.” 

Such rhetoric from top Russian leaders positions Ukrainian cultural sites as not merely collateral damage, or something to be disregarded, but as possible targets in and of themselves. 

Conclusion

The missile strikes near Shevchenko Park and near the pedestrian bridge led to civilian casualties and impacted civilian centres. Consequently, the available facts strongly implicate International Humanitarian Law.

Most discussions of the war in Ukraine understandably focus on military questions: how many air defense systems does Ukraine have? How many troops can both sides mobilize? How is the defense production industry keeping up with demand? These are all important questions, but they all relate to the question of how to fight. Cultural heritage sites, like those attacked on 10 October 2022, are part of the answer as to why Ukraine fights on. This incident was not merely an attack on some landmarks that can be rebuilt and restored, it occurred in the context of what appears to be a broader campaign by Russian President Putin seeking to destroy the Ukrainian nation both physically and psychologically; the outcome of years of anti-Ukrainian rhetoric from high-ranking Russian officials. This assessment is supported by several reputable international organizations. The PACE's Culture Committee has condemned “the systematic erasure of Ukrainian cultural identity by the Russian Federation ... the denial of Ukrainian cultural identity, including ... destruction of cultural heritage sites.” Amnesty International likewise argued that “'Russia has systematically sought to eradicate Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar identities' …” The US mission at the OSCE has also stated that “... Russia is trying to undermine the very notion of Ukrainian statehood, of the Ukrainian language, and in effect, of Ukrainians as having their own separate identity”.

While physical destruction is an inevitable component of any armed conflict, if this attack was indeed part of an intentional campaign Russia’s targeting of cultural heritage sites and Ukrainian culture and identity more broadly would go well beyond the action needed to achieve military goals. Given that context, attacks on Ukrainian heritage and culture may be key to understanding why Putin chose to start this war and what his objectives are.

This investigation was undertaken by Mnemonic’s Ukrainian Archive, an international
NGO that preserves, analyses, and memorializes open source documentation of the
international human rights and humanitarian laws violations to support accountability,
advocacy, and transitional justice, in cooperation with hromadske.