Crimea’s cultural landmarks are again being pulled into the war.
A 19th-century museum in Sevastopol was damaged after Ukrainian drones struck Russian-controlled territory in the Black Sea peninsula, according to local officials. Sevastopol’s Russian-appointed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said early Wednesday that the museum’s panorama painting by Franz Roubaud, “Siege of Sevastopol,” had been hit, though pieces of the original canvas remained unharmed.
Razvozhayev said Russia’s Emergency Ministry, the Sevastopol Rescue Service, and other responders were dispatched to the site and extinguished a fire. He described the building as more than a museum, calling it a symbol of resilience that had repeatedly absorbed enemy attacks.
The institution is dedicated to the 1853–56 Crimean War, the brutal conflict between the Russian Empire and an alliance that included the Ottoman, French, and British empires. Razvozhayev also linked the damage to the World War II Siege of Sevastopol, saying the Panorama building had once been subjected to mass bombing by German aviation.
The strike comes amid a wider pattern of cultural losses tied to the war. Before Russian forces withdrew from Kherson, local cultural workers said nearly the entire collection of the Kherson Regional Art Museum had been removed. In 2024, museum officials identified 99 of 100 works allegedly looted from the collection by Russian forces, using a propaganda video shot in a Crimean museum.
Ukraine has also accused Russia of turning Tauric Chersonese, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Sevastopol, into a historical and archaeological park. Last year, the European Union sanctioned the Tauric Chersonese State Museum-Preserve and its director, Elena Morozova, for actions it said undermined Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
As the fighting continues, museums and monuments in occupied territory remain exposed not only to physical damage, but to the political struggle over history itself.
