Main contributor: Mykola Vronskyi
Map of Ukraine as of 16 August 2024.

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, triggering a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion, which is considered the largest conflict in Europe since World War II,[1] has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. By 2024, Russian forces have occupied about 20% of Ukraine's territory. Of a total population of 41 million Ukrainians, about 8 million have been internally displaced, and more than 8.2 million have fled the country as of April 2023, creating the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

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Impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine in genealogyImpact of Russian invasion of Ukraine in genealogy

Russia's invasion of Ukraine (both in 2014 and 2022) has had a negative impact on the possibility of historical and genealogical research, among other things. First of all, we are talking about the destruction and looting of museums and archives in Ukraine by Russia. The most significant losses for Ukraine include

  • The State Archives of Donetsk Region, the State Archives of Luhansk Region and the State Archives in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (2014), which are located in the occupied territories. Legally, these archives were moved to the territories controlled by Ukraine, but the fonds with archival files remained in the occupation.
  • Russian shelling of the Babyn Yar memorial centre in March 2022.[2]
  • An attack on the Chernihiv Regional Department of the SBU (2022), which houses the files of those repressed during the Soviet era. [3]
  • Attack on the Hryhorii Skovoroda Museum (May 2022) [4]
  • Attack on the Roman Shukhevych Museum (on the night of 31 December 2023 to 1 January 2024).[5]

This list is far from complete, but it contains the most important consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for historians and genealogists.

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