For four years, Vitalina Martynovska and her team had been working on a complete overhaul of Kyiv’s National Chornobyl Museum. The new, sleek displays were designed to tell a fresh story about the reactor explosion on April 26, 1986 – the worst nuclear accident in history, an event that helped bring down the Soviet Union, and one that still shapes Ukraine’s identity today.
The museum wasn’t just going to focus on the incredible work of the “liquidators” who handled the initial cleanup after the explosion. It was also meant to tell the story “of all the people whose lives changed after the disaster,” said Martynovska, the museum’s director.
It reopened to visitors on April 26, exactly 40 years after the nuclear disaster.
Then, less than a month later, on the night of May 23, a shockwave from a Russian missile hit the museum’s beautiful historic building, a former fire station.
Five days later, a still deeply shaken Martynovska stood among the museum’s charred remains. Firefighters worked hard amid the complete destruction of everything she and her team had worked so hard to create.
“There’s practically no room in the museum that hasn’t been damaged,” she said. “The building itself took a lot of damage. The roof was destroyed, the floor between the second and third stories collapsed, and the exhibition rooms and museum lab were affected.”
According to early estimates, about 40% of the irreplaceable artifacts on display were destroyed.
Martynovska first heard that her building was on fire around 5 a.m. on May 24. Throughout the night, Russia launched 60 missiles and 600 drones at Ukraine, most aimed at the capital. The attack killed two people and injured 90 more, and heavily damaged many of Kyiv’s museums and culturally important buildings.
“Twenty minutes later, I was already there,” she said. “The first thing I saw was thick smoke and flames on the roof. The windows, doors, and gates that were part of this building were already lying on the ground nearby.
“Given that I had been working on the restoration project with the team and on building a new exhibition over the last four years, you can imagine what a heavy blow this was for me.”
As soon as emergency workers allowed, she and the chief curator rushed into the building to try to save what they could. “We started evacuating the artifacts while the roof was still on fire and the firefighting was still going on,” she said. “We could hear the roof collapsing. We were constantly wading through water.”
As she spoke, emergency workers were securing a space that had held a display about the Chornobyl area before the power plant was built. The artifacts included old Bibles, books, icons, and ceramics, most of which were destroyed. A text on the wall describing the room’s theme remained intact – translated, it read, “Lost worlds.”
The museum’s storage areas, which hold the bulk of the 22,000-artifact collection, were safe, she said. And she had some hope that the 40% loss of artifacts on display might be revised down a bit. She was holding a pretty earthenware jug that emergency workers had found in the blackened wreckage. They had also found, she said, the tail of a missile.
Across town, wind and rain were blowing into the elegant building with its Doric pediment that houses the National Art Museum of Ukraine (Namu). Shockwaves had blown out nearly all its windows, parts of the ceilings had fallen, and panels from its huge wooden front doors had been thrown across the foyer. The sculpture of Apollo on its pediment had cracked.In one of Namu’s galleries, museum workers and culture studies students are clearing away debris. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian
Its collection—featuring ancient icons, old masters, and Ukrainian modernists—is either in storage or on tour abroad. Since the full-scale invasion began, the museum has hosted temporary exhibitions. The current show, titled Sunrise, features works by 20th-century painter Anatoly Limarev. It was protected from flying glass and debris by temporary walls set up in the exhibition space, which acted as baffle walls. After the attack, the exhibition was quickly taken down and moved to safety.
In one of the elegant galleries, the head of exhibitions, a senior conservator, and two students from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy—who are working there as part of their art history degree—were shoveling rubble into carts.
“It’s definitely an internship they won’t forget,” said museum spokesperson Veronika Bublei.
She described the early morning of May 24 as “stressful, horrible—we were rushing around trying to do what we could, and there was no time for emotion. Or we turned the stress into something practical.”
“It felt like the center of a storm, with all the doors and windows blown out—as if a tornado had swept through the building.”
View image in fullscreen: Inside Namu, which was damaged in the Russian attack this month and is now closed to the public. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian
“My first reaction was shock,” said Namu’s director, Yulia Lytvynets, who, like her team, was dressed in work clothes as staff continued the exhausting cleanup on Thursday. “We understand there’s a war going on. Our halls are empty and our art is safe. But you’re never 100% ready for something like this. Even if you hide your collection, you can’t hide the building.”
The museum had been preparing its next exhibition, focused on modernist theatre designer Anatol Petrytskyi. That will now go ahead online, she said. The building is closed to the public for the foreseeable future.
Numerous cultural buildings and institutions were reported damaged in the city after the night’s attacks, including the Zhytnyi market, a masterpiece of 1980s modernism.
This was the latest attack to damage cultural buildings and heritage in the country. According to Ukraine’s culture ministry, the Russian army has “destroyed or damaged 1,723 cultural heritage sites and 2,524 cultural infrastructure sites in Ukraine” since 2022.
View image in fullscreen: Oleksandr Buryma, the chief technician of Mala Opera, shows the back yard of the building without windows. Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian
Fire had swept through a mall and market in the Lukianivka district of the city. At Mala Opera, a performance venue across the street from the burned-out shopping mall, the venue’s chief technician, Oleksandr Buryma, was fitting plastic sheeting over blown-out windows as a temporary fix. He said the roof was damaged and a section of the back wall had been blown out.
But the early 20th-century venue—once a cultural center for tram workers and now a beloved small-scale stage for theatre and music—was still planning to go ahead with its performance on the evening of May 29: Railroad, a play by US writer Bryan Reynolds set during the rise of Nazism, he said.
In this case, the show—if it possibly could—would go on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the topic We could hear the roof collapsing how Russian missiles destroyed Kyivs cultural landmarks
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What is this article about
Its about a specific attack where Russian missiles hit and destroyed historic buildings and cultural sites in Kyiv Ukraine The title comes from a witness describing the sound of a famous museums roof caving in
2 Which landmarks were hit
The main landmark discussed is the Museum of Local Lore along with other cultural sites in the city center such as the Kyiv National Academic Theatre of Operetta and nearby historic residential buildings
3 Why are these buildings important
They are not just old buildings they hold Ukraines history art and identity The Museum of Local Lore for example housed irreplaceable artifacts and documents dating back centuries
4 Who did this
The attack was carried out by the Russian military using missiles as part of its wider invasion of Ukraine
5 Was anyone hurt
Yes The attack killed several people and injured many others including civilians and museum staff
IntermediateLevel Questions
6 What kind of missiles were used
Reports often mention cruise missiles and ballistic missiles launched from Russian aircraft or ships These are longrange weapons designed to destroy large targets
7 Was this an accident or intentional
Ukrainian officials and international cultural experts consider this a deliberate tactic to erase Ukrainian cultural identity Targeting cultural landmarks is considered a war crime under international law
8 What was lost in the Museum of Local Lore
The museum lost its entire 20thcentury collection including paintings folk costumes historical documents and archaeological finds Much of it was stored in the building that collapsed
9 How did people describe the attack
Witnesses reported a loud explosion followed by the sound of the roof and walls caving in Firefighters worked for hours to put out the blaze but the building was largely destroyed
10 What is the international response
Organizations like UNESCO have condemned the attacks There are ongoing efforts to document the damage for future war crimes trials but little has been done to physically stop the bombing
Advanced Questions
11 Does this violate the Hague Convention
Yes The 1954 Hague Convention
