UNESCO trains Ukrainian military in protecting cultural heritage amid war

That’s according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Ukrinform reports.

"The outright armed attack by Russia, its military aggression destroys not only the Ukrainian people, cities and villages, but also the national cultural heritage of our state," the General Staff said.

During the event, issues were considered of introducing a mechanism for documenting and investigating crimes against cultural heritage ​​in armed conflict.

It was also about extending the norms of international humanitarian law onto this area, learning about the requirements for their observance and spreading awareness of the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954 and the two Protocols to it (1954 and 1999).

The participants in the training course represented civil-military cooperation teams of Ukraine’s Army units at all levels, as well as other elements of the Security and Defense Forces, specialists from the Ministry of Culture, and experts in the field of cultural heritage.

Chief of the Central Directorate for Civil-Military Cooperation at the General Staff, Colonel Oleksandr Kutkov, noted that training on protecting cultural heritage is one of the important areas of cooperation, as is the implementation of a common vision of the mechanisms for interaction with law enforcement and civil sector, who are actively working in this area.

Civil-military cooperation officers from the UK, the Netherlands, and other partner countries, as well as experts from the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and Prosecutor General’s Office, also attended the event.

During the training session, the participants sought answers to questions of how to strengthen the capabilities of Ukraine’s security and defense forces in the said context.

They also discussed and considered the possibilities of deepening the interaction of Ukraine’s government institutions with international security and non-governmental organizations in the field of combating crimes against cultural heritage.

In particular, it was about launching coordinated efforts across the domains of civil-military cooperation, forensic examination, and others.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, 2,024 cultural infrastructure sites were damaged in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale aggression, of which 334 were completely destroyed.