Russian aggression, which includes the occupation of Crimea and other territories of Ukraine, has become a significant challenge for Ukrainian culture, which includes the culture of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine. And while the Ukrainian authorities and society strive to preserve the relevant cultural heritage from the genocidal actions of the Kremlin and carry out relevant systemic measures, appealing to the international community, including the UN, UNESCO and OSCE, it is the occupied peninsula that has become for Russia a laboratory for developing practices not only of oppression and destruction of culture, but also for its use within the framework of a holistic policy directed against Ukraine and the values of modern European civilization, which has signs of cognitive war.
According to the definition used in military literature, cognitive war includes any military and related actions aimed at influencing the behavior, attitudes, thinking processes and perceptions of target audiences in order to achieve a strategic advantage over the opponent. NATO describes it as an activity that combines various tools to influence, protect, or disrupt the cognitive processes of individuals or groups in order to gain or maintain an advantage.
Ukrainian authors such as Volodymyr Shemayev emphasize that modern wars are “fueled by the provisions of various theories and concepts, and sometimes disguised as official theories.” They add that “a multifaceted approach is becoming mandatory on the cognitive battlefield,” and “as the digital age continues to develop, the ability to adapt and respond to these challenges will be crucial to protecting the integrity of information ecosystems and, ultimately, democratic institutions.”
Mykola Stelbytsky adds that cognitive warfare operations “are much less costly than military interventions, pose fewer reputational risks than economic confrontation, and are virtually invisible to legal accountability mechanisms,” since “information warfare is not a new phenomenon for the world, but the rapid development of communication technologies”, which “makes it much more complex and dynamic, complicates the possibilities of effectively countering the information influence on society and the state”. Therefore, in the situation of the aggressor’s actions in cognitive warfare and the use of culture as its tool, Olesya Tsybulko, an expert of our Association, tried to understand.
Before the start of the full-scale aggression, the dimensions of the occupiers’ cultural “policy” in the field of cognitive warfare in Crimea were reflected in publications primarily regarding measures to promote the “Russian world” in general and the so-called “Russianness” of the occupied peninsula in particular. At the same time, quite specific markers were cases of the predatory attitude of Russians and collaborators towards the archaeological heritage and architectural monuments of Crimea, as well as the international reflection of these processes, the main trigger of which was the case of “Scythian gold” in the Netherlands.
We will recall that in June 2023, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands finally ruled that the “Scythian gold”, which had been the subject of a lawsuit in this country for years, should be returned to Ukraine. The Supreme Court confirmed the decision previously made by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal in October 2021 on the need to return the gold to Ukraine and rejected the cassation appeal of the “Crimean museums”. This case, despite its successful completion and the return of this museum collection to Ukrainian control in 2024, has been overgrown since 2014 with numerous speculations by collaborators, the main “talking head” of which has invariably been the “director” of the so-called “Central Museum of Taurida” Andrey Malgin.
Therefore, it was not surprising that the occupiers used the same Simferopol “museum” and the same Malgin already during the full-scale war to predatorily remove tens of thousands of cultural artifacts from the Kherson Regional Art Museum. At the same time, the same Malgin does not disappear from public events organized by the Russian special services, such as literally dozens of “conferences”, “round tables” and other “anniversaries”, in particular using the “legacy” of the Yalta Conference of 1945, which are held in the Livadia Palace located, by the way, in a cluttered historical park.
However, other architectural objects, such as the Vorontsov Palace, have recently become a constant setting for numerous propaganda shows, which their organizers and sponsors, such as German Gref from the Kremlin’s “Sberbank”, “fruitfully combine” with the development of the surrounding areas for “locations of new Russian culture”, primarily in the form of penthouses and villas.
A separate dirty page of such “cultural colonialists” was the creation of “New Chersonese” under the patronage of top corrupt officials from the Russian Ministry of Defense and the “Crimean Metropolitan” Tikhon “appointed” by the occupiers. However, these figures do not plan to stop at the desecrated ruins of the ancient city and announce similar plans for the Scythian Neapolis in Simferopol and for the ancient monuments of Kerch, the “creative refinement” of which is planned by the aggressor for the “anniversary celebration of the city” planned by the Kremlin.
Let us recall that it was the Russian-controlled “Chersonesus museum workers” who also became the perpetrators of the looting of the Melitopol “Stone Tomb” (“Kamyana Mohyla”), in apparent attempts to build the “Crimean” foundation of Russian imperialism not only on ancient and medieval bones and ruins, but also with references to the “ancient pagan practices” they themselves invented.
The reaction of civilized jurisdictions to these processes was extremely slow, and was embodied primarily in the introduction of sanctions against Russian institutions and their key figures involved by the Kremlin in a cognitive war against the modern world. As Ukrainian officials recently pointed out, more than 200 archaeological sites were significantly damaged or destroyed by illegal excavations for the implementation of the aggressor’s infrastructure projects in Crimea, these are “at least 80 burial mounds, more than 40 settlements and hillforts, and 20 underground necropolises.”
However, a year ago, the Ukrainian authorities reported on the posting on the web resources “Stolen Heritage” of information about cultural values that the aggressor appropriated during “archaeological excavations” in the occupied Crimea. These artifacts were discovered by the occupiers during illegal “archaeological” excavations since 2014 at such archaeological sites as the Artesian settlement, the Genoese fortress of Chembalo, Tavrian Chersonesus, the Kadykivske settlement, etc. A new legal example in this area is the detention in Poland in December last year at the request of Ukrainian law enforcement officers of the “Russian archaeologist” Alexander Butyagin, specifically for illegal excavations of the Crimean ancient settlement of Myrmekion.
However, after the District Court of Warsaw granted permission to extradite Butyagin to Ukraine in March of this year, he was subsequently exchanged at the Polish-Belarusian border, and the circumstances of this action suggest that this “archaeologist”, who had previously traveled to European universities with “lectures”, was actually recognized as an employee of the Russian special services. It is noteworthy that after this exchange, Ukrainian law enforcement officers changed the qualification of Butyagin’s charges, assessing his actions as a violation of the laws and customs of war.
The presence of epaulettes from Russian punishers among “museum workers” and “archaeologists” controlled by the aggressor has long been an open secret, as have the real tasks of the “Russian Historical Society” established in 2012 by the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, as well as the “Byzantine Club”, the “Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society”, etc.
Separately, it is necessary to point out the Kremlin’s provocations in the field of cognitive warfare and in the sphere of Crimean Tatar culture. Against the background of systemic repressions against this indigenous people and the predatory “restoration” of the Bakhchisarai Khan-Saray and the isolation from the local community of the Yevpatoria medieval mosque Khan-Jami, Russian special services are trying to use ethnic creative collectives of Crimean Tatars for propaganda campaigns both in Russia itself and in third countries, as an example recently in Uzbekistan.
A similar approach is used by Russian special services for other Crimean ethnic communities. Against the background of the destruction of the medieval Armenian church of the holy archangels Gabriel and Michael in occupied Feodosia, and mass speculation about the paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky stolen by the aggressor in Crimea and Mariupol, Russian special services are trying to use the remains of the Armenian cultural heritage of the peninsula to influence society, the church and the government of modern Armenia.
Similar provocations by Russian special services with the Greek, Bulgarian and German cultural heritage of Crimea were noticed in such projects of global influence of the Kremlin as the “International Russophile Movement” and “Friends of Crimea”. Against this background, the war with the Latin alphabet in public places of the peninsula initiated by the Crimean collaborators of the Vladimir Konstantinov clan, which was then spread by the aggressor to the entire territory controlled by the Russians, was far from accidental.
The occupiers also use modern artificial intelligence technologies, in which they conduct cognitive warfare operations, which we analyzed this year on the example of the “Flourish in Crimea” campaign, with the “reinterpretation” of Russian cultural figures of the past through artificial intelligence. We wrote that this provocation is aimed at achieving several effects: the occupied territory symbolically receives the “approval” of figures of the cultural canon; the line between the real text and the generated fake is erased in the audience; the name of a cultural figure begins to work as a political resource in a context in which the long-dead author himself could not participate.
Thus, the key factor in responding to these processes in the legal and political dimension should be cooperation with international structures and law enforcement agencies of civilized countries. At the same time, an important aspect of such cooperation should be specific and recognized by the parties to the cooperation parameters of the damage caused to cultural heritage and the weaponization of culture by the aggressor during the international armed conflict and occupation of the peninsula as part of the Kremlin’s cognitive war against the civilized world. Our Association previously reported on the systematic work carried out on this issue within the framework of a series of forums “The Future of Crimea” and on the relevant reports at the meetings on the human dimension of the OSCE and the UN Special Rapporteurs.
Now, at the request of the UN Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights, we have sent relevant proposals to Geneva for the development of global indicators in the field of culture by the United Nations’ bodies. We stated that the situation of Russian aggression against Ukraine and the occupation of the territories of Ukraine is an example of the fact that in conditions of international armed conflict and foreign armed control of territories, indicators of the level of protection of cultural rights should include special ones.
Firstly, this is the level of compliance by the parties to the conflict with international humanitarian law regarding guarantees for the cultural environment, which includes the number of damaged and destroyed historical and cultural monuments, the number of stolen and misappropriated cultural objects and artifacts, the number of cultural figures affected, the level and parameters of the use by the parties to the conflict of means of protecting cultural objects, in particular physical protection, evacuation, marking and digitization.
Secondly, this is the level of compliance by the parties to the conflict with international criminal law regarding guarantees for the cultural environment, which includes the level of international crimes committed against cultural objects, the presence of national and international proceedings initiated regarding the relevant facts and persons involved, and the number and forms of bringing them to justice.
Thirdly, this is the level of compliance by the parties to the conflict with international human rights law regarding guarantees for the cultural environment, which includes the level of censorship restrictions, the degree, format and number of penalties and other repressions for publications and events in the field of cultural life, the degree of use by the parties to the conflict of hate speech, racist and discriminatory rhetoric, the reflection of these facts in impartial reports of human rights structures, international organizations and judicial bodies.
Also, this is the level of compliance by the parties to the conflict with cultural rights in the field of education, including the content of curricula, the language of education, the applied educational materials, reflected in the regulatory framework and in management practice.
In addition, we added for UN officials, indicators should include the level and forms of the parties to the conflict using cultural or quasi-cultural means as a form of cognitive warfare and propaganda, in particular in third countries and at the global level, the level of use of such means to justify aggression, other international crimes, as well as the occupation and attempted annexation of territories, the extent to which disinformation and fakes are used in this, in particular with the use of modern technologies, including artificial intelligence.
Thus, it is obvious that a systematic analysis of the aggressor’s criminal acts of cognitive warfare and the use of culture as its tool must be continued.
