The first report that “Moonlit Night” will be the main lot of the auction, which will take place at the Moscow Auction House on 18 February, appeared on the Telegram channel by Russia’s state-funded news agency RIA Novosti, noting that the painting was estimated at 100 million rubles (approximately $1.09 million) before the sale.

‘In 2017, [Interpol], at the request of [Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Crimea], put the paintings on the international wanted list. Thus, Russia openly disregards [international law], as according to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the export of cultural properties and transfer of ownership is prohibited,” Mamedov emphasized on X.

Aivazovsky and his art

Ivan Aivazovsky, the 19th-century Ukrainian painter of Armenian descent, was a master of marine art, producing around 6,000 paintings during his 60-year career. Born in Feodosia, Crimea, he studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg and spent time in Italy.

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some of his works were destroyed in an airstrike on the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, and others were looted by Russian forces from Mariupol and Kherson museums, including “The Storm Subsides,” which was moved to the Central Taurida Museum in Simferopol, Crimea.

Russia’s destruction and looting of Ukraine’s art heritage

In late February 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum in the Kyiv region was burned down by Russian forces, destroying paintings by Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko and other exhibits. Some of Prymachenko’s paintings were saved by a local resident who broke into the smoldering building and rescued about ten works. In total, the museum housed 25 of Prymachenko’s paintings.

After the occupation of Donetsk’s Mariupol early in the full-scale invasion, Russian forces pillaged more than 2,000 items from the city’s museums, including ancient religious icons, a unique handwritten Torah scroll, a 200-year-old Bible, and over 200 medals, as reported by the city’s council.

As Russia retreated from Kherson in fall 2022, it looted the Shovkunenko Kherson art museum, effectively stealing 80% of one of Ukraine’s richest art collections. Although Russia did not retreat from Kherson’s Kakhovka City, the retreating Russian army reportedly looted the Kakhovka local history museum, stealing its entire collection of over 15,000 items, including significant artifacts like ancient Greek amphoras and a Scythian ritual headdress, to occupied Crimea. 

Following Russia’s forces’ destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023, Ukrainian naïve painter Polina Raiko’s Home-Museum in Kherson’s Oleshky was submerged underwater, leaving only 30-40% of the frescoes intact. Oleshky remain under Russia’s control to this day.

In May 2023, Russian forces looted the ancient reserve museum of Chersonesos Taurica, UNESCO’s World Heritage-listed site, in temporarily occupied Crimea, as reported by the Office of the President of Ukraine in Crimea, taking artifacts such as ancient bone and clay works under the false pretext of transporting them to a Byzantine gold exhibition in Veliky Novgorod, while also conducting illegal archaeological excavations on the museum’s premises.

As of July 2023, more than 664 cultural heritage sites had been damaged or destroyed since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, according to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.

Read also:

• Take a look at the unique paintings Russia looted from the Kherson Art Museum
• “Brotherhood of nations”: Russia opens museum of looted Ukrainian belongings
• Russian occupiers proudly steal raccoon & rest of animals from Kherson zoo
• Russians looted Byzantine gold from the Chersonesos Museum in Crimea
• Rural Ukraine at the break of 20th century as seen by landscape painters
• Tribunal or restitution? Ukraine eyes ways to return one of its richest art collections looted by Russia
• Making Russia answer for destroying cultural heritage in Ukraine
• Army of marauders: the long history of Russian military looting, pillaging, and stealing
• Makeup looted from MH17 turns up on Instagram