Zelenskyy imposes sanctions against Russian museum workers

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enforced the National Security and Defense Council's sanctions against 15 heads of Russian museums. About it says in Decree No. 580/2025, published on the President's website.

The Presidential Commissioner for Sanctions Vladyslav Vlasiuk explained to the Ukrainian media that the "Museum workers" package includes 15 heads of Russian museums who hold exhibitions glorifying Russian aggression and try to integrate seized Ukrainian museums into the system of the aggressor state.

For example, Yulia Kupina, director of the Russian Ethnographic Museum, opened the exhibition "Multinational Russia" in the temporarily occupied Berdiansk, which included exhibits from Ukrainian museums.

Two more defendants in the package, Artem Silkin and Galina Alekseeva, are running for the governing bodies of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and their presence there is absolutely unacceptable.

• august 14, 2024, Russians in the temporarily occupied Yalta lesya Ukrainka's museum was destroyed and instead dedicated the exhibition to the Russian architect Nikolai Krasnov.
• on July 2, 2025, it became known that the Russian occupiers plan to build a shopping and entertainment center in the temporarily occupied Crimea on the site of an ancient Roman fort.