Russia has looted thousands of Ukrainian cultural objects in the war. Finding them is a challenge

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — When Alina Dotsenko returned to her museum after Ukrainian forces retook the southern city of Kherson from Russian forces in late 2022, she found thousands of artworks had vanished.

“I walked in and saw empty storage rooms, empty shelves. My legs gave way, and I just sat down by the wall, like a child,” the Kherson Art Museum director said.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, the museum held more than 14,000 works in a collection “ranging from America to Japan.” As the Russians retreated, they loaded much of it onto trucks and took it to Russian-annexed Crimea, according to Dotsenko and video filmed by residents.

The fate of nearly 10,000 pieces remains unknown.

Ukraine is again raising its voice over the looting as Russia seeks to return to the world's cultural stage. Next month's Venice Biennale plans to allow Russian representatives to take part for the first time since 2022. Ukraine has said the event “must not become a stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage.”

The Kherson case stands out because Ukraine knows exactly what was lost.

Years before the war, Dotsenko began photographing every item in the museum’s holdings, creating a digital archive. When Russian forces occupied Kherson, she hid the hard drives containing it. After Ukrainian troops returned, she retrieved them.

Today, that archive forms the most detailed record of looted cultural property during the war, allowing prosecutors to work with Interpol to trace missing works and pursue those responsible.

Across much of Ukraine, however, such documentation does not exist. And cultural losses can only be pursued in court if they can be proved, item by item.

The Russian Culture Ministry did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment on the alleged removal of items from Ukrainian museums. In the past, Russian-appointed officials in occupied territories described the removal as protective measures.

Kirill Stremousov, the former Russia-installed deputy administrator in Kherson who died shortly before Ukrainian forces liberated the city, said removed statues would “definitely return” once fighting stopped.

Halyna Chumak, former director of the Donetsk Regional Art Museum, fled Russian-controlled Donetsk in 2014, carrying what she could: catalogs documenting a fraction of the museum’s roughly 15,000 artworks.

She spent a year transporting the catalogs through checkpoints into Ukrainian-controlled territory, leaving most behind as she tried not to draw attention from pro-Russian forces who searched her at each crossing.

Those catalogs covering just over 1,000 items are the only surviving evidence. More than a decade later, Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleksandr Velychko is digitizing them.

It took his team over three painstaking months to process about 400 works. Once completed, the database will be given to Ukrainian authorities, providing a partial legal basis to claim ownership of missing items.

Officials say many cases across Ukraine resemble Donetsk more than Kherson.

Anna Sosonska, deputy head of a war crimes unit at Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office, said her department is handling 23 criminal proceedings involving cultural crimes, covering 174 episodes of looting, damage and destruction.

The Kherson museum case is among the priorities, she said, largely because of Dotsenko’s digital archive.

Sosonska said Russian forces often remove inventory books and other documentation from museums, making it harder to establish what was taken.

Prosecutors sometimes rely on open-source intelligence, tracking artworks through photos, auction records and other online traces — a labor-intensive process that cannot reconstruct entire collections.

It takes time, but Sosonska noted that cultural crimes fall under international law and have no statute of limitations.

Ukrainian officials say the scale of looting far exceeds what can be documented.

According to Ukraine’s Culture Ministry, Russia as of March had destroyed or damaged 1,707 cultural heritage sites and 2,503 cultural infrastructure facilities including events spaces and galleries, notably the Mariupol Drama Theatre.

The ministry said over 2.1 million museum objects remain in Russian-occupied territories. Of the territories Ukraine has retaken since 2022, over 35,000 museum items are confirmed to have been looted.

Large parts of Ukraine have been under Russian occupation since 2014, and much original documentation has been lost, destroyed or removed.

Russia has moved to formalize control over seized collections. In 2023, it amended legislation to incorporate 77 Ukrainian museums in the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions into its national catalog, a step critics say effectively prohibits the return of looted works.

Appointed as Ukraine's culture minister in October 2025, Tetiana Berezhna said digitalization will be a key priority for her office to preserve collections.

“If we had digitalized them beforehand, then we would know how many objects were stolen and what they look like,” she said.

A recent case in Europe has drawn attention to the possibility of accountability.

In March, a Polish court ruled that Oleksandr Butiahin, a Russian national, can be extradited to Ukraine over allegations he conducted illegal excavations in Crimea, removing artifacts from a site Ukraine considers its cultural heritage.

Butiahin was detained in Poland last year at Ukraine’s request. The court's decision remains subject to appeal.

Sosonska described the case as the first time a Russian national could face prosecution for crimes against Ukraine’s cultural heritage linked to occupied territory.

For museum workers like Dotsenko, the issue remains deeply personal.

She spoke with The Associated Press at an exhibition in Kyiv featuring reproductions of the paintings taken from the Kherson museum.

“While these works are still in captivity, we all hope the situation will be resolved in favor of the Kherson Art Museum. I didn’t dedicate 50 years of my life to this museum for nothing,” she said. ——— AP journalist Dmytro Zhyhinas contributed to this report

Visitors at Ukraine's National Art Museum bundle up due power outages caused by Russian air attacks on the country's energy system during winter in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A visitor at Ukraine's National Art Museum is bundled up due to power outages caused by Russian air attacks on the country's energy system, affecting the museum's temperature during winter in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Ukraine's Culture Minister Tetiana Berezhna speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb.. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Ukraine's Culture Minister Tetiana Berezhna speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — After decades waiting for justice, relatives of women murdered by New York’s Gilgo Beach serial killer laid into him Wednesday before he was sentenced to life in prison. He told them: “I am responsible” for the crimes.

“The words I would say would have no meaning,” added Rex Heuermann, the Long Island architect who lived a secret life of violence for years before admitting he killed eight women.

The sentencing capped an extraordinary investigation that solved one of New York’s most perplexing mysteries. The seemingly unconnected and largely overlooked disappearances of young women became the focus of true-crime documentaries, books and podcasts after police began discovering the victims’ skeletal remains in the sandy scrub along a coastal parkway.

Heuermann, 62, will have no possibility of parole.

But “a million years isn’t enough,” Jasmine Robinson, a cousin of victim Jessica Taylor, said. “Nothing will ever make this right.”

“You fill me with so much repugnance, I can’t stand it,” Robinson said.

As a series of victims' kin spoke, Heuermann sat with his hands on the defense table, looking straight ahead and lightly tapping his fingers. Then Amanda Funderburg, victim Melissa Barthelemy's sister, urged Heuermann to look at her.

He glanced in her direction, but his eyes were slightly downcast.

“I hope you suffer,” said Funderburg, who recounted getting a taunting phone call from him days after Barthelemy disappeared, when Funderburg was 15 years old.

JoAnn Mack, the mother of victim Valerie Mack, told the killer that her daughter "had dreams, and you took them all away from her.”

“Justice has been done, but it can’t replace what has been taken,” Mack said.

Heuermann pleaded guilty in April to charges that he murdered seven women: Barthelemy, Mack, Taylor, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and Sandra Costilla.

Heuermann also admitted in court to killing an eighth victim, Karen Vergata, though he was never charged in her death. He said he strangled his victims, many of them sex workers, and dismembered some of their bodies.

“Are you at least a little sorry?” Judge Timothy Mazzei asked him Wednesday in a loud, indignant voice.

Heuermann nodded and appeared to mouth “yes.”

“You are disgusting — a despicable man, if you are a man at all,” the judge said, his voice rising. “And you are a coward.”

As Heuermann was led away in handcuffs, spectators in the packed courtroom seemed to jeer.

Most of the women disappeared between 2000 and 2010, and most of their remains were found on a parkway not far from Long Island’s Gilgo Beach, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Manhattan.

Costilla’s remains were found in 1993, more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) away in the Hamptons, while Vergata’s remains were found in 1996 on Fire Island, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Gilgo Beach.

Brainard-Barnes’ two children, who were 7 and 1 when she disappeared in 2007, underscored Wednesday how her absence shaped their lives and how she never got to know the adults they grew up to be. Her sister, Melissa Cann, said she lived with “survivor’s guilt” for decades, wondering whether she could have done something more to protect Brainard-Barnes.

“It was a weight I carried everywhere,” Cann said, sobbing deeply. But, she said, that guilt is “not mine to carry. It is for Rex and Rex alone.”

Liliana Waterman was 3 when her mother, Megan Waterman, vanished. The daughter said she didn’t fully understand what had happened until she was about 9.

“In an instant, my world was shattered,” she said. “Was she in pain? Was she scared?”

The case spilled into view in 2010, when investigators started to find remains along Ocean Parkway while looking into the disappearance of another sex worker, Shannan Gilbert, whose death was ultimately ruled an accidental drowning.

The case went cold until 2022, when detectives linked Heuermann to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.

Eventually, they matched DNA from a pizza crust Heuermann discarded in a Manhattan trash can to genetic material extracted from highly degraded hair fragments found on the women’s remains.

Investigators amassed other evidence, including cellphone and tracking data showing Heuermann arranged meetings with some victims shortly before their disappearances. After Heuermann's 2023 arrest, prosecutors recovered what they described as a “blueprint” for the killings from his computer files.

Calling the man “a monster,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney declared that there was nothing Heuermann could say to mitigate his deeds.

As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to cooperate with the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit to help catch other serial killers.

Heuermann has spent the past three years alone in a segregated cell at the Suffolk County jail, reading crime novels, occasionally being visited by his lawyers or family, and striking up a brief correspondence with the infamous “Happy Face Killer,” according to Sheriff Errol Toulon.

Through their lawyers, Heuermann's ex-wife and two grown children said they did not attend the sentencing out of respect for the victim’s families.

Peltz reported from New York.

Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo.

Defense Attorney for convicted murderer Rex Heuermann, Michael J. Brown, arrives to the the Arthur M. Cromarty Criminal Court Complex ahead Heuermann's court sentencing Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in Suffolk County, New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Natile Dilea, a member of a sex-workers rights group, stands in line to enter the Arthur M. Cromarty Criminal Court Complex ahead of a court sentencing for convicted murderer, Rex Heuermann, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in Suffolk County, New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Members of a sex-workers rights group, hug each other while waiting in line to enter the Arthur M. Cromarty Criminal Court Complex ahead of a court sentencing for convicted murderer, Rex Heuermann, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in Suffolk County, New York. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)