More than 600 days of war in Ukraine have left 10,000 civilians dead and another 18,000 injured, in addition to forcing more than six million people to take refuge in other countries. With the first snowfall falling on Kyiv, experts predict a break in the conflict, which has been stagnant for months.

The lightning operation devised by the Kremlin to take the Ukrainian capital and overthrow President Volodymyr Zelensky did not work, nor has the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army – and its latest generation weapons from the West – been successful to break the Russian lines and achieve the expulsion of the invaders.

It is estimated that around 500,000 soldiers (300,000 from Russia and 200,000 from Ukraine) have died in this entrenched conflict, which has also caused the intentional destruction of cultural heritage, at a level not seen since World War II, to erase history. and local memory, as explained by researchers from the University of Notre Dame in an article published in the journal Antiquity.

The team led by Professor Ian Kuijt has carried out the first ground-based survey of Ukrainian archaeological sites since the Russian invasion and has discovered that thousands of sites, including many that were not even recorded, have already been damaged since the fighting began in February of 2022.

The virulence of the conflict, however, has so far made it difficult to determine the extent of the damage, which in turn hinders attempts to preserve Ukraine’s heritage, say American specialists, who have used drones to reach the less accessible areas.

“As the war is still ongoing, it is not yet possible to assess the damage to cultural heritage on the front lines,” the authors state. Still, since the deoccupation of the Kyiv, Zhytornyr, Chernigov and Mykolaiv regions in June 2022, “a preliminary understanding has been reached of the scale and nature of the destruction in some areas.”

Archaeologists are painting a picture of the destruction by initially focusing on the Chernihiv region, a historic city in northern Ukraine on the banks of the Desná River, famous for its monuments from the Kievan Rus’ era (907-1256 AD). the Cossack Hetmanate (1649-1764).

Many historic buildings have been damaged, including the Regional Children’s Library (former Vasyl Tarnovsky Museum of Ukrainian Antiquities), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, or the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater in Mariupol.

Underground cultural heritage is also being destroyed at an alarming rate. Widespread trench systems and missile attacks are impacting cemeteries and burial mounds, destroying human burials at sites such as Boldyni Hory (11th century), one of the largest Ukrainian necropolises ever discovered.

This damage to cultural heritage is also linked to the loss of civilian life, since intentional attacks against historic centers, such as churches and theaters, inevitably cause deaths and injuries to the people who congregate there. Furthermore, many of the damaged sites were unregistered, meaning that some parts of Ukraine’s archeology have been lost forever.

According to UNESCO data, the damaged cultural sites that have been verified amount to 331 as of November 30, 2023. Of these there are 125 religious spaces, 144 buildings of historical and artistic interest, 29 museums, 19 monuments, 13 libraries and an archive.

Specialists from the University of Notre Dame highlight the importance of quickly registering heritage so that it can be preserved. “In a situation where hostilities are far from over, it is important for specialists from cultural heritage protection bodies and public activists to collect information on the scale and nature of damage and destruction of archaeological sites,” they conclude.