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Ukraine's museums eye Russian focus on east with suspicion
Museums in Lviv only dare open their doors a chink, convinced Russian forces will pillage Ukraine's culture as they have its villages.
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People walk past the Lviv National Art Gallery with windows protected by sandbags in the western city of Lviv on May 13, 2022. (AFP/Yuriy Dyachyshyn)
T
o get into the Potocki Palace, a gem of Ukrainian architecture, you have to show your ID, slip past the armed soldiers and duck under some scaffolding.
All that, just to see some bare picture rails.
Life has resumed a semblance of quasi-normality in Lviv, western Ukraine, since Russian forces pulled out of the Kyiv region to focus their offensive on the south and east.
But museums in the self-styled capital of culture only dare open their doors a chink, convinced the invaders will pillage Ukraine's culture as they have its villages.
"We'd like to open up a bit more but security is complicated," explained Vassyl Mytsko, deputy director of the Lviv National Gallery. Ukraine's largest fine arts museum has 21 sites, housing a vast collection of 65,000 works of art.
"How can we be sure the Russians aren't just gathering their strength again so they can chuck all their rockets at us?"
The staff of the National were taken by surprise when Russia invaded on February 24. "We didn't think the strikes would get this far" and threaten Lviv, Mytsko said.
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