'Ghost museum' Beacon of hope bears witness to invasion horrors

The museum of local history in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium has, like the community around it, endured much since Russia's full-scale invasion.

- Charlotte Higgins

When Izium was bitterly fought over in early 2022 at the start of the Russian assault, the 19th-century building suffered two direct hits from missiles that blew out the roof and led to flood damage.

Under occupation from March to September 2022, a Russian guard was posted on the door- but invaders never transported its collection any deeper behind Russian lines, or found the rare 18th-century volume of the gospels - one of only three of its type - that museum workers had hidden.

The museum is now back in Ukrainian hands but remains in a fragile, vulnerable state, uncomfortably close to the frontline and the threat of reoccupation. The roof is repaired, says the director, Halyna Ivanova, but there is no point reglazing the windows while the town is still threatened with missiles.

The bulk of the collection has now been safely evacuated and its precious volume of the gospels, which was also concealed from the Germans during the second world war when the museum was almost completely destroyed, is being conserved after its time in hiding.

At the moment, the institution is a kind of ghost museum. Its collection is absent; its doors are closed to the public because of the danger of attacks; and its community, whose collective memory it holds, has shrunk to half its 40,000 pre-invasion number.

But there is still much work to do, says Ivanova. The museum staff now run walking tours of the city's shattered historical buildings.

They host temporary exhibitions inside damaged rooms ("loft style", she jokes, of the rough walls and improvised feel), even if its visitors are now confined to local military personnel and invited guests.

"We are trying to preserve memories, to fix them," she says. "To show people how the city was before the war, what has happened to it - and how it looks now."