‘Ukraine doesn’t forget its cultural landmarks’: the team risking their lives to rescue statues from the frontline
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Version 0 of 3. Operation has retrieved 11 babas from southern Ukraine, where Turkic nomadic people flourished in medieval times A bearded expert and a group of Ukrainian soldiers arrived in the village of Slovianka on a special mission. Their goal did not involve shooting at invading Russian forces. Instead, they had come to rescue a unique piece of history before it could be swallowed up by war and a frontline creeping closer. The soldiers placed a giant object a wooden pallet. It was a carved stone figure created about 800 years ago. The sculpture – of a woman holding a ceremonial pot, wearing a necklace and with tiny legs – was lifted gently on to a flatbed truck. “We didn’t think we would have to evacuate it. But we do. It’s sad,” Yurii Fanyhin, who coordinated the operation, explained. Today Slovianka is a small farmland community, not far from the administrative border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts. In the 11th and 13th centuries, however, it was at the centre of a vast steppe route. A Turkic nomadic people – known as the Cumans or Polovtsy – flourished here, north of the Black Sea. They were formidable and skilled warriors. Their world survives in the form of elaborate funerary statues known as babas, which once littered the landscape of southern Ukraine. Each represents a dead individual. There are fighters depicted with weapons, helmets and belts. And – unusually for the early medieval period – there are many women. Some wear jewellery; one is pregnant; all have hair hidden under a hat. In spring 2024, Fanyhin and his soldier-volunteers travelled to the under-fire city of Velyka Novosilka, now under Russian occupation. They retrieved a sculpture hit by shrapnel. Other figures standing on a hill were damaged when the Russians seized the north-eastern city of Izium. So far the team has rescued 11 babas. They have been transported west to Dnipro’s national history museum. The museum has more than 100 Polovtsian sculptures. It is the world’s biggest collection. Some are in good condition. Others – after centuries of rain and snow – have lost many of their features, their smooth heads and torsos reminiscent of abstract works by the 20th-century sculptor Henry Moore. The outside pavilion where they are kept recently lost some of its glass when a Russian missile landed nearby. The museum’s director, Oleksandr Starik, said he was hopeful the British Museum or another international institution could help conserve and restore the statues. At a time of conflict, there was little Ukrainian government funding available for culture, he acknowledged. The babas were not only sacred national heritage but disproved the claim that Ukraine did not exist and was a part of “historical” Russia, he said. In 2022, Vladimir Putin used this false idea to justify his invasion. “It’s important for Russia to show that only Slavs lived on this territory and no one else. In fact, the steppe was mixed. There were many different ethnicities,” Starik said. “Our task is to show that it’s our ancestors who lived there. They were nomads who moved all the time and were not connected with the Russian imperium.” The Cumans placed their statues on mounds, as close to the heavens as possible. According to Starik, the figures showed the boundaries of different tribes and were used as easy-to-spot steppe markers. The figures were seen as alive, and as a way of communicating with ancestors, in accordance with shamanist religious traditions. Sacrifices were carried out at the sites, Starik suggested. Of Putin’s attempted conquest of Ukraine, he said: “It’s colonial politics. The empire doesn’t work unless you seize new territory.” He continued: “It was important for us to save the statues. The enemy doesn’t care about them. The Russians are completely indifferent to the past. They keep smashing up our monuments using artillery and bombs.” Two of the babas were retrieved from the town of Mezhova, now only 15km (9 miles) from the frontline, on the eastern edge of Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Earlier this month a Russian drone blew up a civilian minibus and a glide bomb destroyed the town’s school. In 2014, statues were lost when Russia staged a covert part-takeover of the eastern Donbas region, seizing the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and their museum artefacts. Yevhen Khrypun, the editor of the local Mezhivskyi Merydian newspaper, said the sculptures were fascinating because they were a concrete representation of a living person. “The idea that the Polovtsy are our ancestors is not very scientific, to be honest. Earlier we had Scythians, Sarmatians and Cimmerians. It’s more symbolic: these were all people who lived on our lands,” he said. Not everyone is happy to see the sculptures moved to safer areas. Last weekend, after the female baba was removed, the Slovianka village authorities filed a report with the police. They alleged the sculpture had been stolen. The convoy heading back to Dnipro was stopped for several hours while officers checked documents. “It was a crazy standoff. They blocked the road with a tractor,” Fanyhin reported. In some cases the statues are impossible to retrieve. One is located outside the city of Kostyantynivka, besieged by Russia. First-person-view drones cruise its streets, targeting any vehicle that moves. “We need help from the military to get it out. But no one wants to risk their life for a statue. I don’t want to risk mine either,” Fanyhin said. The historian said the rescue missions had kept him sane, during a stressful period of war and loss. “In some way the babas saved us,” he said. “We feel we are doing an important and even a great thing. It shows that Ukraine doesn’t forget its cultural landmarks, even statues on the frontline. After our victory, they will be more valuable.” |