In Ukraine, the memory of the war is already featured in museums

This article was first published by Le Monde.

Two exhibitions are taking place in Kyiv: One on the invasion led by Russia and its war crimes, the other on the eight-month occupation of Kherson.

The Motherland Monument, which was inaugurated by Leonid Brezhnev in 1981, still towers over southern Kyiv at a height of 102 meters, with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. The open-air museum it overlooks, named the “Museum of the Great Patriotic War” during the Soviet era, is now called the “National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War,” with resources mostly online.

A giant flag in the blue and yellow colors of independent Ukraine is now flying over the Park of Eternal Glory, where two new museums have been established since the Russian invasion began nearly a year ago. The desire to document the ongoing tragedy, which is palpable throughout the country, is not just a demand for justice, so that war crimes do not go unpunished.