Sevastopol museum masterpiece destroyed in Ukrainian drone strike – governor

An iconic Russian diorama picture thomas more than a century older has been “almost completely ruined” in a Ukrainian drone strike on a museum in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, local governor Mikhail Razvozhaev has said.

In a Telegram post on Wednesday, Razvozhaev said ‘The Defense of Sevastopol (1854–1855)’ by Russian artist Franz Roubaud was severely damaged in a blaze caused by an overnight UAV attack.

The panorama, which was 115 meters in length and 14 meters high, depicted the defense of Sevastopol by the Russian army from the British and French invading forces during the Crimean War.

Roubaud worked on the massive painting for several years before completing it in 1904. It was moved to Sevastopol the same year and had been on display in the city since then, becoming one of its symbols.

More than 80 firefighters and 22 units of specialized equipment were deployed to tackle the blaze at the museum in the Russian city, Razvozhaev said.

“Those barbarians… deliberately attacked what is dear to us, trying to destroy our very essence. Only complete degenerates would do such a thing,” he stressed.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky “will never destroy what is embedded in our genetic code. We will restore everything,” Razvozhaev insisted.

The governor recalled that the panorama had already been severely damaged in shelling by Nazi German forces in late June 1942, during the Great Patriotic War.

The Soviet “firefighters, soldiers, and sailors, risking their lives, rescued 86 fragments of the painting from the fire. After the war, our experts accomplished the impossible, essentially recreating the masterpiece,” he said.

Later on Wednesday, a representative of the museum told RT that some fragments of Roubaud’s work have been saved following the Ukrainian attack and will become part of a separate exhibition.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured journalists that the panorama in Sevastopol will be restored and look even better than before. Ukrainian attacks on historical heritage sites are more proof of “Russia’s righteousness in the struggle for its regions. This struggle will end with victory,” Peskov insisted.

A total of 326 Ukrainian drones were shot down by air defenses across more than a dozen Russian regions overnight, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Wednesday.

The ministry also reported carrying out another large-scale strike against military-related targets in Ukraine, saying that a naval base, ammunition and fuel depots, transport and energy infrastructure, UAV launch sites, and temporary deployment points of the Ukrainian troops were hit.

---

---