Charlotte Higgins

But there are lots of things you can't do anything about.

You know, if there's a beautiful...

17th century wooden church in a frontline area.

There's very little you can do to protect that from fire, but you can't pack it up and move it.

Yes.

So there was a group of extremists

Extraordinary, ordinary people, not people who were employed by museums or by the state or by any kind of official apparatus, led by a guy called Leonid Maroschak, who risks unbelievable dangers.

I mean, if you remember back in 2022, it looked like Kiev might fall.

And so the first thing he did was he drove into Kiev to deliver humanitarian aid to the city and then drove out with...

archives and artworks.

When I say he drove, he actually can't drive.

His brother-in-law drove him and his wife's mini countryman.

He was taking out super important archives and artworks.

There was a sort of powerhouse couple in the 1960s called Alla Horska and Viktor Zoretsky.

They were both sort of dissidents and pro-Ukrainian

They made unbelievably amazing work.

He arranged to get their archive out, stuff like that.

Amazing, amazing stuff.

And then, because he'd worked quite a lot in eastern Ukraine, he realised that museums that he knew in the east were threatened.

So he, again, for the first few months, using this mini countryman...