During the summer, to the delight of Russian and foreign tourists alike, many of the old wooden churches and onion-domed cathedrals that dot the Soviet countryside were opened to the public.

The Russian guards, presumably not suspecting anything ... Moscow’s order to loot art from Ukraine did not surprise the 82-year-old art historian Dmytro Gorbachev. In 1938, he told me, Moscow ...

When Ukrainian art and artifacts have been looted, Russian troops are often helped ... were purging most of the museum’s staff, 66-year-old Galina Aksyutina, who oversaw the library, took ...

Dmitry Krymov, a seventy-year-old theatre director ... and his allies.” Russian audiences don’t want an exclusive diet of heavy, morose, emotionally draining art on themes of war and sacrifice.

The 28-year-old was later sentenced to 20 years in jail. His case illustrates the severity of the crackdown on dissent -- both real and imagined -- in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.

They claim that Russia has "systematically [been] erasing Ukraine's centuries-old cultural identity" since the start of its invasion in 2022. Signatories of the letter include art historian ...