In the House of Parliament of Great Britain on November 30, Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Goyle, First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist Viktor Pinchuk and Executive Director of the International Lawyers Association Dr. Mark Ellis presented the Russian War Crimes exhibition to British parliamentarians war crimes). The project, organized by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation and the PinchukArtCentre in partnership with the Office of the President of Ukraine, tells the stories of those people and places that became objects of the terrible reality of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The Russian War Crimes exhibition sheds light on the atrocities committed by the Russians since the start of their all-out war against Ukraine in February of this year. It documents the actions of a state that not only invaded a peaceful country, but also actively targeted the Ukrainian civilian population through a series of criminal acts, including rape, kidnapping, deportation, executions, and bombings. The exhibition includes photographs from all over Ukraine taken since the beginning of the war. Despite this, it covers only a part of known crimes. The exhibition brings back to Ukrainians the faces and names that have become statistics. It removes people from numerous statistics and offers at least some victims the opportunity to speak out and share their story.
The First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska congratulated those present and thanked them for taking the time to participate in the event: “More than 40,000 war crimes have been registered in Ukraine. These are not just statistics, but real people and places with faces and names. Every executioner in this war also has a face. But these are people without two things: they have no soul and no conscience. I hope that you will look at the photos, and at the same time, the abstract idea of the war in Ukraine will become real. The exhibition shows only a small part of the atrocities committed against Ukrainians. Now, when we are opening the exhibition here, the Russians are killing, raping and humiliating Ukrainians. They will continue to kill with impunity unless we stop them. I would be very grateful to all of you for spreading the truth about the war so that we can restore justice.”
Businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk, in turn, noted: “Since 2016, I have been participating in the creation of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center – the place where 81 years ago German Nazi soldiers killed more than 33,000 Ukrainian Jews in two days. We created this memorial with the dream that such atrocities would never happen again. Since February 24, we have again witnessed numerous war crimes and realized that our dream of “never again” has unfortunately not come true. We must tell our story loudly so that the international community will come to our support. Therefore, we created this exhibition in partnership with the Office of the President of Ukraine. We first presented it at the Russian House in Davos (a building officially known as the Russian House), and since then we have presented it in Brussels and also in New York.
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“It's terrible , that even more heinous crimes have been committed since our last exhibition. We must expose these crimes for what they are, so that the international community realizes that strong sanctions are needed and that we need their support and even more arms supplies. We hope that this exhibition will help show what we are defending against, what we are fighting for and why we must win together. Art is a powerful tool, and I know that the exhibition will contribute to our victory,” concluded Mr. Pinchuk.
