Russian masterpieces are hidden away in a Ukrainian museum, writers like Pushkin and Dostoyevsky are shunned and the Russian language is eschewed. After the invasion, the words ".and Russian" were deleted from the name of its key "Ukrainian and Russian Art" department, museum official Maryna Filatova told AFP.
When the city was attacked, the museum scrambled to save masterpieces like "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks" by Ukraine-born Russian painter Ilya Repin.
As museums across the country evacuate art and cultural treasures, the curators of the Ukrainian pavilion at the Venice Biennale smuggled works to Austria by car so the show can go on.
"It is simply irony of fate that we should be saving Russian artists, paintings by Russian artists from their own nation," said the head of the museum s foreign art department.