Ukraine’s Military Turns Heritage Protection Into Field Doctrine
Ukraine’s armed forces have published a new handbook designed to make the protection of cultural property part of military practice, not an afterthought. Posted on the Na Zviazku military organization website on 23 June, the guide lays out soldiers’ obligations under international humanitarian law, the levels of protection available to cultural property, and the procedures for identifying, reporting, and documenting attacks on heritage.
The handbook was developed with two experts from the Regional Center for Human Rights, a Sevastopol-based organization founded in 2013 that relocated to Kyiv after Russia annexed Crimea. Andrii Lutsyk, one of the co-authors, said the need for the publication became clear after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its aim, he said, was to make “international humanitarian law and the decision-making logic that it establishes” accessible to military officers who “simply do not have time to work through lengthy theoretical documents.”
The text moves from the basics of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict to practical questions such as identifying cultural treasures and preparing them for evacuation. It is illustrated with examples of artworks illegally seized by Russia and cultural sites destroyed in combat, a choice Lutsyk said was intended to create an emotional connection with heritage and encourage more careful protection in the field.
That practical emphasis reflects the war’s realities. Lutsyk said existing recommendations from Unesco, Nato, Icom, and other international bodies often assume conditions that do not exist in combat: enough time, enough resources, secure communications, and the ability to carry out every required measure. In Ukraine, he said, one or more of those elements is frequently missing.
The handbook also reflects a broader shift in how the war has been documented and managed. The army’s Cultural Property Protection unit has marked 58 items with 184 Blue Shield emblems, evacuated 44 Polovtsian statues from the 11th to 13th centuries to the Dmytro Yavornytskyi National Historical Museum in Dnipro, and integrated digital mapping of cultural sites into the Delta situational awareness system.
Among the sites and institutions damaged by Russian strikes are Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Dovzhenko Film Studio, and the Kharkiv Art Museum. For the handbook’s authors, those losses underscore a central point: in modern warfare, cultural heritage is not merely collateral damage, but part of the conflict itself.
