“We removed the museum’s exhibition Trypillia Culture in the first hours, in the morning of 24 February…”

The state historical and cultural reserve Trypillia Culture in the village of Legedzyne, Cherkasy region, was created in 2002 on the basis of the largest site of Trypillia settlement called Talyanka. In the Museum of Trypillia Culture, you can see exhibits that are more than five thousand years old. There are some unique things and entire collections, namely some artefacts that are of universal importance. That is why on the first day or even in the first hours of the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, the management and personnel of the museum were taking down and removing the exposition and preparing it for evacuation.

The very next day, the museum itself and the entire village turned into a volunteer hub. In the museum, people were weaving camouflage nets, developing a defence plan, collecting everything they could collect for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (from money to salo [cured slabs of fatback, rarely pork belly]), and even were making Molotov cocktails – they were ready to stop the tanks with their bare hands. And local residents of the village managed to shelter up to 150 people for the night – thousands of cars from the capital and eastern regions passed by Legedzyne every day.

Director of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve, famous film director and historian Vladyslav Chabaniuk told us about the life of the reserve during these long months of full-scale war and about how archaeologists, scientists, young film directors and residents of Legedzyne, together with the whole world, are bringing victory closer. The victory after which, although not in the first years, but still “tourists from all over the world will be coming to Ukraine to learn the history and culture of the people who preserved and protected freedom, independence, and democracy, and stopped the enemy,” Vladyslav Chabaniuk is convinced.