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What the June 2026 Kyiv strikes did to culture
Summary
A look back at the attacks on the Dormition Cathedral and the Dovzhenko Film Studios, reported in the days before 17 June 2026.
What did the Russian strikes on Kyiv mean for Ukrainian culture in the days before 17 June 2026? The reports available by that date, dated 15 June, pointed to attacks on two of the capital's cultural sites.
The Dormition Cathedral in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra was heavily damaged and set ablaze during the strikes. The same reports said nine people were killed, among them five rescue workers who had been attending fires set by strikes in Kharkiv. The Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kyiv were also attacked.
A wider pattern of damage
The attacks came more than four years after Russia began its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, a major escalation of the war that began in 2014. Over that period, many pieces of Ukrainian cultural heritage were destroyed, damaged or put at risk by widespread destruction across the country.
The destruction and looting of more than 500 Ukrainian cultural heritage sites is considered a war crime. Ukraine's Minister of Culture has described it as cultural genocide.
Why it matters
The two sites represent different parts of Ukrainian cultural life: a religious complex in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and a film studio. Reports of 15 June placed both within the same wave of strikes on the capital. The human toll in the same reports, including the deaths of rescue workers, shows that the damage was not limited to buildings.
