During one of the largest-scale Russian missile attacks on Kharkiv on 23 January 2024, the Russians bombarded, among other things, the city's historical area. As a result, 62 historic buildings were damaged.
“It is not considered a war crime if you had fun,” reads graffiti left by Russian soldiers in the backroom of a bar in the village of Velyka Komyshuvakha, located in the Izium district of Kharkiv Oblast. Before being liberated, the area was occupied by Russian forces for six months between April and September 2022, during which Russian troops set up a network of torture chambers and carried out a systemic, organized effort to terrorize the local population. The message is just one of around 650 inscriptions translated and verified by members of the Wall Evidence project, an open-source digital archive of graffiti, drawings, diary entries, notes, and other markings left behind by Russian forces in previously occupied territories.
The HeMo: Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Lab has recorded damage to 55 cultural heritage buildings in Odesa following the Russian missile attacks in July. Since 28 July, a team from different cities in Ukraine, including Lviv, Drohobych, Kharkiv, Kherson and Kyiv, has been working on documenting the damage caused by Russian missiles in Odesa.