Ukrainians try to protect their 'past' from the 'present'; rush to save cultural heritage from Russian attacks
Protecting their heritage
In the cobblestoned western city of Lviv, a team led by restorer Andriy Fedoryshyn has been using plexiglass, fire-proof padding and heavy duty canvas to protect statues outside their 18th-century baroque cathedral.
Preventive measure
"After having seen how Russia is destroying residential blocks and infrastructure facilities in our cities, we realized that preventive measures are needed to protect Lviv architectural landmarks," said Fedoryshyn while talking to Reuters.
Decades old heritage
St George's Cathedral, which sits on a hilltop in Lviv, belongs to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. In the 1940s it was handed by Stalin to the Orthodox church, until it was returned to the Catholics in the 1990s.
Keeping destruction to the minimum
Lviv, once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, became a symbol of the persecution that the Catholic Church experienced under Soviet communism.
"Working tirelessly, we try to protect them as much as we can to bring the destruction of landmarks to a minimum," Fedoryshyn said.
Historic artworks need to be saved
Earlier this week in the Black Sea port city of Odessa, workers built walls of sandbags several metres high around a monument to Duc de Richelieu, the early 19th-century governor who helped transform the Black Sea port into a modern city.
Museum staff in Kharkiv also moved historic artworks to safety, many of them by Russian artists, including Ilya Repin’s "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks".
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