In the three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, near-daily heavy drone strikes and missile bombardments have killed thousands of civilians and displaced many more. In addition to the loss of life and large-scale damage to civilian infrastructure, Russia has targeted many valuable Ukrainian cultural and natural heritage sites.
Now, Donald Trump’s presidency poses new challenges for Ukraine, suggesting a pivot away from preservation efforts supported by the Biden administration, like the State Department’s Ukraine Cultural Heritage Response Initiative.
At least 476 landmarks have sustained damage since February 2022, including archaeological and religious sites, buildings of historic or artistic significance, museums, monuments, libraries, and archives, according to a list published by UNESCO last month. These sites include the Kyiv Teacher’s House, also included in the World Monument Fund’s (WMF) 2025 watch list of threatened cultural heritage.
A historic symbol of Ukrainian independence, the former parliament building saw its doors, windows, and glass-paneled dome damaged by a rocket blast in October 2022. The WMF, supported by the US State Department Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and Kyiv City Administration, completed repairs on the building last year, including replacing the shattered dome glass.
“History and culture are paying a heavy toll for the war and it is no coincidence that they are being attacked, because it is Ukraine’s very identity and nature that are being attacked through them,” Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications Mykola Tochytskyi said in an October assembly meeting for the Council of Europe. Tochytskyi emphasized that the widespread wreckage of Ukrainian culture is part of Russia’s systematic plan to “rewrite history.”
Despite the efforts of organizations like WMF, Trump’s recently imposed federal funding freeze has left the future of vital programs uncertain. This is true for the Ukrainian Heritage Digitization and Dissemination Initiative (UHDDI) which aims to preserve Ukrainian cultural artifacts by digitizing collections such as those of the Odessa Archaeological Museum.
Launched by the nonprofits CyArk and Archaic in 2023, the initiative is supported by the US Embassy Fund Program. It currently consists of a team of almost 20 people who work around the clock to safeguard Ukrainian heritage, Simon Radchenko, Archaic co-founder and UHDDI project coordinator, told Hyperallergic.
Radchenko said that UHDDI “largely depends on the US interest to keep it going” and that Archaic is currently open to collaborating with other international institutions.
Other Ukrainian heritage preservation programs also remain in limbo, like the State Department-funded Conflict Observatory Ukraine, which has been documenting the impact of Russia’s war on Ukrainian cultural and natural heritage. In the program’s first phase, Senior Investigator Kate Harrell told Hyperallergic that researchers documented a trend of intentional Russian activities aimed at erasing Ukrainian culture (an assimilation process known by historians as “Russification”). Harrell said that the activities the researchers have recorded included crackdowns on religious freedom, the looting of the Kherson Museum, and trafficking of antiquities and natural resources to Russia. Other examples of Russification have included classifying Ukranian artists as Russian.
The next phase of the program is supposed to focus on preservation and dissemination, but last month, the program’s website went dark, cutting off access to the report hub and database for investigators.
A State Department spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the department is “currently conducting a strategic review of all State Department activities to ensure they are efficient and consistent with the America First agenda.”
“Some program and initiative activities, projects, and planned travel are affected by this strategic review, which remains in progress,” the spokesperson said.
These developments come as international officials express alarm over President Trump’s comments about a potential peace agreement, which appeared to center Russia’s interests to the detriment of Ukraine’s participation in what was widely criticized as a shocking diplomatic pivot.
But while federal programs have been halted amid the funding freeze, the reports of atrocities have not stopped, noted Fiona Greenland, a senior investigator for the Conflict Observatory Ukraine.
“The current administration’s actions to date point to a significant de-prioritization of investigating alleged atrocities in Russia’s full-scale invasion,” Greenland told Hyperallergic.
“If we don’t document the impacts of this war on Ukrainian culture and communities, we risk losing not only valuable information, but also the ability to tell the full story of what happened,” Greenland continued.
The cultural heritage work of nongovernmental organizations and civil society groups like WMF and the Ukrainian Institute of America (UIA), which focuses on promoting and preserving Ukrainian arts and culture, are becoming increasingly critical.
“The reduction of US support for cultural preservation initiatives threatens not only physical monuments and artifacts but also broader efforts to safeguard Ukraine’s cultural legacy for future generations,” Lydia Zaininger, executive director of UIA, told Hyperallergic.
Today, February 27, WMF CEO Bénédicte de Montlaur is traveling to the capitol to have in-person conversations with partners at the State Department about the organization’s federal grants that support its cultural preservation and conservation work.
“In any case, we will need support from other institutions and donors to continue our work in Ukraine,” a WMF spokesperson told Hyperallergic.
As nongovernmental organizations continue to pursue this work, Greenland noted, the federal funding freeze “sends a chilling message” to Ukraine and other conflict zones that “protecting art, religious freedom, literature, architecture, and historic sites are no longer in US interests.”
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