War has reminded us of the vital role of museums in society

The violence of war, and all its horror, has a clarifying effect on what really matters in every aspect of life

- Charlotte Higgins

In the immediate aftermath of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, those caught up in the terrifying events found that language was reduced to its most fundamental function: telling loved ones they were alive.

The work of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv was, similarly, refined to its most basic essentials: safeguarding the objects; ensuring they would be there for the next generation.

The researcher Oleksandr Lukianov and his team lived in the museum for a month, dismantling displays of Greek pots and Scythian gold and sending them to safety. After the Russians had withdrawn from the nearby towns of Bucha and Irpin, he and his team went into those once-pleasant commuter towns to collect artefacts. These objects - everything from abandoned Russian ration packs to the remains of weaponry - bear raw, bloodstained witness to the violence enacted there.

The work was made more urgent by Vladimir Putin's ideological framing of the invasion: the denial that Ukraine has its own distinct identity or historical narrative. Under those circumstances, the Ukrainians' impulse to collect material and quickly, pragmatically display it in the emptied-out museum asserts that they actually exist; that this actually happened.