War. Stories from Ukraine

Ukrainians tell stories about their life during the war

“It will be nice to visit the restored museum after the war and hear that the locals saved the exhibits.” Ihor Nikolaenko, Ivankiv, Kyiv Region

by | 16 April 2022 | Kyiv region

 

On February 27, a shell hit a museum building in Ivankiv, north of Kyiv. This museum was home to Maria Prymachenko’s paintings. Reports that the artist’s works burned down along with the museum immediately appeared on the Internet. But later the news came that the locals had saved them. 

It was impossible to verify this information at first. By the end of March, Ivankiv was occupied. Some villages in the Ivankiv Community were almost destroyed. In an interview with the Media Initiative for Human Rights, a local woman said she had counted 300 air bombs in 22 days. In April, the Ukrainian military liberated the village and began to restore the cell connection. “Elon Musk brought us a miracle satellite dish,” the locals joke. It became possible to find out what had happened to the museum.

 

 

Ihor Nikolaienko is a CrossFit and powerlifting coach for children. On February 27, he was in the village filming a convoy of Russian military equipment moving along Ivankiv’s main street. After that, he turned to the city park, where the museum is located. 

Ihor says that he saw the smoke and ran to the museum building. The roof on one side of the building had already caught fire, but a part of it was still undamaged. Several people were standing near the museum. “I said, ‘Let’s try to break in. Let’s save at least something.’” The men pulled out the bars on the windows, smashed the windows with them, and climbed inside: “Note this: the builders’ negligence saved the exhibits. The bars were held by self-tapping screws screwed into the insulation.” The museum was renovated several years ago.

 

Maria Prymachenko’s painting

 

Two other men saved the exhibits together with Ihor. There was Anatolii, a man who lives next door to the museum, and some 23-year-old guy—Igor doesn’t know his name or who he is. The three of them took things from the museum and gave them to people through the windows. They stacked them side by side on the grass.  

The museum building, as Ihor explained, is divided into two parts. There was heavy smoke where the shell hit, and they couldn’t get there. But the other part of the roof had not caught fire yet, and from there they took everything they could. First of all, the paintings by Maria Prymachenko. Many of the artworks, Ihor says, were stacked five meters from the window into which they climbed. “We were lucky. We intuitively chose that window. That’s why we took the paintings first.”

 

 

In addition, they saved woven towels by Hanna Veres, historical household items made of wood (a cradle, a butter churn, etc.) and photo albums. There were some stuffed animals in the museum, but they were not saved—”not the most valuable things.” 

The work to save Ukrainian art took about 20 minutes. Then the roof of the whole building caught fire. The rescued exhibits were taken to a neighbor’s yard. 

“The motive was simple: to save what could be saved,” says Ihor. “It will be nice after the war, in five or ten years, to visit the restored museum where they will say that these things were saved by the people of Ivankiv. And now there will also be a reason to build a new museum for the saved exhibits.”

 

   

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