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A child's bicycle

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A BICYCLE



Not long after arriving in Ukraine, over a year and a half ago, I filmed my
interview with famous Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov here in. Kyiv at the
“National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War’, otherwise
referred to as the “War Museum”

Sentsov was kidnapped by the Russians in 2014 while bringing food and supplies
to Crimea. He spent five years held in Russian goals illegally and was tortured.
As a result of our interview Sentsov donated his personal archives to the museum
and these are part of the permanent display, as is my interview. Oleh has
returned to the front and seen some of the heaviest fighting in the Bakhmut
area. Since then, he has been seriously injured twice and each time returned to
the front to defend his homeland. His wife gave birth to their son, who he has
only seen on three short trips home in the last year and a half.

I donated a copy of the interview to the museum collection from myself and on
behalf of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations representing
Ukrainian diaspora in Australia.

As a result a formal invitation was issued to Stefan Romaniw OAM, to visit the
Museum and meet the museum Director Dr Yurij Savchuk.
 



What is it? Imagine The War Memorial in Canberra marries MCA Museum of
Contemporary Art Sydney, but much, much bigger. It is a huge complex indoors and
outdoors and incorporates the Motherland Monument and the largest Ukrainian flag
in Ukraine.
 



On this visit to Kyiv, Stefan Romaniw was taken by our frineds  Dmytro and Olena
from Rotary International Kyiv to visit the temporary shelters for internally
displaced people at Irpin that are supported by Australian Rotary and Ukraine
Crisis Appeal,
I couldn’t attend this day so I caught up with them the next day for the
organised visit to the museum and a meeting with museum director Yurij Savchuk.



We met at the entrance as Yurij was waiting for us outside and welcomed us
enthusiastically and warmly. He was presented with a book about the history of
Ukrainian settlement and community in Australia.
He proceeded to guide us through the various exhibitions explaining many details
within the exhibits.
‘This war has changed everything; he said.  A museum is not only an exhibition,
it is a territory, it is its monuments but more importantly it is a place of
memory.” The museum embodies the need to ‘never forget.’



When the Russian attack began, members of the Museum team joined Territorial
Defence and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Some of the women with children
evacuated to the western part of the country or abroad, others actively joined
volunteer initiatives.
From the first day of the invasion the museum workers began to document the
full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine which highlighted the military
aggression through the museum projects.
Thus, as early as in the first month of the Russian invasion, the museum had
already created the first photo exhibition dedicated to one day of the defence
of Kyiv and presented it at the World Centre for Peace, Liberty and Human Rights
in Verdun(France).
 





The drawing of poet Taras Shevchenko was rescued from a school that had been
bombed.

Once the battle of Kyiv was over and the Ukrainian army liberated the
settlements of Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, museum workers went on further
expeditions to witness the brutal crimes of the occupants. Some of the most
distinctive material evidence of russian atrocities was collected and brought to
the Museum.
This is how the exhibition “Ukraine -Crucifixion” appeared, the worlds’ first
stationary exhibition dedicated to an ongoing war in real time. With the help of
original artifacts, photos and oral testimonies of eyewitnesses, the exhibit
reveals the terrible realities of the full-scale Russian invasion. The
exhibition has been continuously evolving and tragically has new artefacts
added.
The information about the exhibits was highlighted and published by the worlds’
media, including: The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Neue Zurcher
Zeitung, CBC, etc.
 



The multi-vector approach in the work and modern socio-political situation
turned the War Museum not only into a place of preserving the memory of
tragedies of the past and present, but also into a place of consolidation and
unification of Ukrainians around the idea of fighting against external imperial
expansion for their freedom and independence.
 
“In this exhibition, you can see the war. Through the original artefacts,
through the stories of the objects, through the artistic interpretation of
today’s emotions. Today’s war” explains Director, Yurij Savchuk.
 
Some local visitors have said, it’s very difficult to look at this, they
understand how fortunate they may have been to avoid occupation which was only a
matter of kilometres away.
 



On a screen on the wall, a baby’s mother gives a chilling video testimony.
On the first floor a church gate ripped open by shrapnel opens to reveal a room
displaying artwork inspired by the conflict.
Burnt-out candles beneath a war-torn painting of Christ pay tribute to the dead,
as well as to Ukraine’s damaged religious heritage.



A grenade hidden under a toy in a sandpit recalls what the childhoods of
millions of young Ukrainians have lost.
 
One of the visitors who was with his son was reported to say “it is necessary to
explain to our children what is happening in Ukraine now“



As Savchuk climbed the stairs to the second floor, he pointed to a metal gate
that had been sprayed with bullets. It belonged to a wooden church from a town
on the outskirts of Kyiv called PEREMOHA which means “victory” in Ukrainian.
In the centre of the room hangs a cross salvaged from another church that had
been destroyed. Under it is displayed an icon of Jesus being taken off the
cross. The glass covering of the painting has been pierced by shrapnel over the
face.



Portraits of deceased soldiers painted on panels from ammunition boxes



The most poignant exhibition in the museum is in the basement, itself having to
be used as a bomb shelter by staff and visitors.
A sign points to the “ukritya” (shelter), a ubiquitous sign in wartime Ukraine –
the wails of air raid sirens still shriek almost every day in Kyiv.
A handwritten sign on paper torn from a school pupils exercise book is taped to
the door. In Ukrainian & russian it advises that only civilians and children are
inside.
The sign, and everything else in the basement, was taken from a basement bomb
shelter in a Kyiv suburb, Hostomel, the site of the airport that russian
soldiers tried to take in the first days of the invasion.
Savchuk and his team have painstakingly reproduced the three rooms and adjacent
corridors, including the graffiti on the walls, in which 120 people spent 37
days underground.
The one historical inaccuracy in the shelter is the absence of the five buckets
that stood in the hallway where the people who lived underground for more than a
month relieved themselves.
The children’s drawings were enthusiastically and pragmatically donated by the
families
For some visitors it is powerful to see their own experiences reflected in a
museum. Some lived in a basement like this in Bucha, others have come from
Kharkiv, The spirit of the way people survived is preserved.
 





Drawngs by children who had to live underground for over a month





After this stage of our tour Stefan related the story of the Bicycle and
presented it to Yuri.
Returning from his visit of DP shelters to Kyiv Stefan and friends stopped by
the Bridge at Irpin.
This was the site where the Bridge had been blown up to stop further advances by
the russian invaders on their way to Kyiv. As civilians were trying to escape
the russians kept shelling them.
The images shocked the world.
Near the bridge there remains a church that was also bombed. Stefan noticed a
rusted and damaged children’s’ bicycle leaning on mangled metal that used to be
the fence around the Church.
His thoughts turned towards home and grandchildren. “Some kid got up early in
the morning to play just like any normal playful child anywhere in the world,
just going for a happy ride and have some fun…
We don’t know what happened.  We have no way of knowing what might of happened –
is this child dead or alive?”
Was this child one of the over 560 known to have been killed according to the
United Nations Rights Monitoring Mission which admits that this number is what
they have verified and the true numbers are much higher.
Was he/she one of the children on the Ukrainian list of nearly 20000 that were
kidnapped and forcibly deported to Russia? Ukraine believes that the true number
could be far higher.
 





The kremlins campaign to eradicate Ukrainian national identity has been the mass
abduction and then indoctrination of Ukrainian children at an extensive network
of re-educational camps inside russia itself.
This has led to war crime charges against Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova where the
International Criminal Court in the Hague issued an arrest warrant.
According to the UNs Genocide Convention “forcible transferring children of a
group to another group”  is one of five recognized acts of genocide.
russian children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova has boasted more than 700 000
Ukrainian children have been deported from Ukraine to russia since February
2022, the start of russia's full scale invasion.
On the 19 December 2023 the United Nations General Assembly  by resolution
“Strongly condemns the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children…”
In the mean time the loss of children in these numbers  (amounting to
approximately  two years  of births) will affect future growth potential of
Ukraine and teh psychological toll enormous



Yuri immediately decided that the child's bicycle and the story of its finding
is an appropriate and evocative addition to the museum’s display where the
actual parts of a children’s playground that had been damaged by bombed blasts
sits as a display of the brutality of indiscriminate civilian targeting by
russia. He invited Stefan to place it in the exhibit where it now remains. The
staff have carefully catalogued it.
It has now been witnessed by people visiting from all over Kyiv, from
international journalists, heads of state and international dignitaries. It will
remain a compelling reminder of missing children and Ukraine’s lost childhoods.

This day we were here, the military allowed us to pat the German shepherd
service dogs who were sniffing out the site in preparation for the visit by
Lithuanian Foreign minister.





High resolution digitisation is preserving cultural heritage directly under
threat by russia.
The Official State Seal, coins, stamps and military regalia from Ukrainian
National Republic (UNR 1917 - 1921) prove Ukraine's Independence & disprove
Putin's claims of Ukraine being "a soviet invention".

The museum as a focal point amongst many, highlights the importance of
preserving historic and living culture. These are the very values and ideals
that the soldiers are willing to give their lives for.When russia occupies a
territory the first thing it does is strip the area and people of everything
representing Ukraine. Exhibitions at the museum have included Art Armour,
Objects from UNR (Ukrainian National Republic 1917-1921)
Stefan said to me, "I now understand what you have been saying about the
cultural front and the military fronts are inseparable".
The museum itself and thus Kyiv’s city skyline have undergone a further
transformation after 30 years of independence. While controversial because of
the money spent, it was seen as an appropriate and poignant point of
decolonisation & decommunization to finally replace the soviet symbol on the
shield of the Motherland Monument with Ukraine’s ancient symbol of statehood,
the Tryzub.
 





Exhibitions:
.https://warmuseum.kyiv.ua/_eng/expositions/current_exhibitions/



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“There are 44 million stories that need to be told!”

Please support the ongoing documentation of life in russia’s war on Ukraine..

BSB:112-879
Account: 459 495 123

Or for tax deductible donations go to: Australian Cultural Fund Project:
Documenting Ukraine
Link: https://tinyurl.com/documentingua

Thank you:

Sviatoslav and Angel Knysh Lily and Ivan Smeciw, Giuseppi Mediati, Ruedolf Ott,
Henry Green, John Maronese, Fay Zybenko, Danylo Stefyn, Tanya Dus, Dr Graham
Manning, Dominic & Suzanne Kelly,







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