“We, Moscovites… robbed richest Ukraine… Moscovy is a monster, which even hell would disdain and spew on the ground.”
Vasyl Rozanov, Russian philosopher (1856-1919)
Moscovy, and later Russia, has been systematically plundering Ukraine since its inception. To the aforementioned, we will add:
Since the first conquests of Ukrainian territories by Moscovy, hundreds of thousands of precious finds from Scythian burial mounds and other places have been taken to Russian treasuries, as well as to the Hermitage and other museums in Russia.
One of the numerous examples is the 7th century BC burial mound destroyed by the Russians – “Lyta mogyla” near Kropyvnytskyi, whose treasures were taken to Russia and are still exhibits in the Hermitage.
One of the main aspects of this process is taking out to Russia archaeological finds and exhibits from looted museums.
Since 1859, Russia has “legalized” the looting of Ukrainian cultural treasures, which were subject to seizure by the “Imperial Archaeological Commission.”
Russian museums were massively filled with valuables from Ukrainian monasteries and temples that had been looted and destroyed by the Russians in occupied Ukraine in the 20th century and even earlier.
The mosaics and frescoes (those that survived) of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral in Kyiv, which the Russians destroyed by blowing it up in 1937, ended up in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Hermitage, and the Novgorod Reserve
“in general, golly, the war was waged in order for the victorious metropolis to take home wagons with the captured gold of the enemy so that everything will be cool with us and we`ll be on a gravy train,…this is Putin’s concept of war”
– Sergey Mardan, propagandist for the Russian state media “Komsomolskaya Pravda” during the broadcast. 2024
In 2023, journalists from the publication “Texts” and the authors of the project “Stolen Treasures” using open data discovered 110 thousand archaeological exhibits stolen in Ukraine in the Hermitage and the Russian Historical Museum in Moscow alone.
So the number is measured in millions of units worth billions of dollars. The list of stolen items includes paintings, sculptures, other art objects, historical documents, old prints, etc.
As of 2024, the Russian Federation has already stolen 480,000 works of art from Ukraine since the beginning of the last war.
Since 2014, Russia has been completely plundering the occupied territories. Millions of tons of metal, agricultural products, and minerals are being taken out.
Equipment from dozens of Ukrainian factories was transported to Russia, and the rest, including equipment from flooded mines, was cut into scrap metal.
As for the Russian army, its soldiers are looting on an industrial scale. The Russian military are sending tons of household appliances, clothes, shoes, tools, in general, anything stolen from Ukrainian homes.
The occupation authorities in the captured cities are conducting a massive confiscation of surviving private homes for their own benefit. Calling to join the Russian army, the authorities, in addition to generous salaries, promise the occupiers apartments, houses and land plots in Ukraine.
Since 2014, hundreds of thousands of Russians have already moved to live in the occupied territories of Ukraine.