Statues on the frontline Fight to save heritage from Russia

The bearded expert and a group of Ukrainian soldiers arrived in the village of Slovianka on a special mission. Their goal did not involve shooting at invading Russian forces.

- Luke Harding

Instead, they had come to rescue a unique piece of history before it could be swallowed up by war and a frontline creeping closer.

The soldiers placed a giant object on a wooden pallet. It was a carved stone figure created about 800 years ago. The sculpture - of a woman holding a ceremonial pot, wearing a necklace and with tiny legs - was lifted gently onto a flatbed truck. "We didn't think we would have to evacuate it. But we do. It's sad," Yurii Fanyhin, who coordinated the operation, explained.

Today Slovianka is a small farmland community, not far from the administrative border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts. In the 11th and 13th centuries, however, it was at the centre of a vast steppe route. A Turkic nomadic people - known as the Cumans or Polovtsy - flourished here. They were formidable and skilled warriors.

Their world survives in the form of elaborate funerary statues known as babas, which once littered the landscape of southern Ukraine. Each represents a dead individual. There are fighters with weapons, helmets and belts. And - unusually for the medieval period - there are many women. Some wear jewellery; one is pregnant; all have hair hidden under a hat.