The issue of protection of cultural property during armed conflict has long been considered in the doctrine of international law of Ukraine under the prism of the bitter experience of destruction in Yugoslavia in 1990, Afghanistan and Iraq in 2000, Syria and other countries. However, starting in the spring of 2014, we began to receive our own examples of the consequences of the armed conflict that began with the annexation of Crimea and the taking of control of several areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Much of the scholarly work on the protection of cultural property during armed conflict usually contains a general analysis of international and national legal acts in this area, but there is insufficient attention to the applied aspects and the issue of international responsibility for such offenses.

The purpose of the article is to determine the basic rules of international humanitarian law applicable to the protection of various types of cultural property in the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and also the rules determining the degree of responsibility for the offenses and crimes in this area.

It is established that, first of all, the protection of cultural property during an armed conflict is regulated by international law, and the norms of national legislation specify certain provisions. The key document is the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of May 14, 1954, which enshrines the protection of cultural property in two classical aspects: positive protection, which imposes on the State the obligation to prepare for the protection of cultural property in peacetime, preparing it for the potential consequences of armed conflict, and negative protection – respect for cultural property – prohibition of the use of cultural property for military purposes and prohibition of attacks on such property.

In the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine there are two main areas of cultural property protection: taking appropriate measures in the territories where active hostilities are taking place, as well as protecting cultural property located in the occupied territories and returning illegally exported property from these territories.

Bibliography

Journal articles

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Newspapers articles

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