War, art, and sanctions

This month marks a sombre milestone: the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on 24 February 2022 and escalated the Russo-Ukrainian War, ongoing since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. With this article, I join what is sure to be a significant number of writers, journalists, politicians, public figures, and others who will publicly reflect on the losses, victories, and lessons learned over these years. While exact casualty numbers may never be known, the Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, and the Kyiv Independent, among other sources, have reported at least one million killed or injured during the violence. To be sure, the preservation and protection of human lives is the priority in any conflict, and in this sense the international community has failed the people of both Ukraine and Russia. With no end in sight, there is no way to tell decisively how the scale of this loss will impact Ukrainian and Russian society in the years that lie ahead.

While Russian expansionist ambitions have focused on the acquisition of territory, the impact on Ukrainian material culture has been no less significant. The widespread looting of art and artifacts from archaeological sites, museums, and other institutions within occupied territory has also been leveraged in an attempt to dispossess Ukraine of its cultural identity.

While there was previously no dedicated law enforcement agency in Ukraine committed to cultural heritage crimes, the Art Sanct Task Force, launched by the National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP), has stepped in to fill this gap. Further, the aid provided by international cultural heritage organizations, such as ALIPH, is helping efforts towards cataloguing cultural objects, restoring institutions, training heritage experts, and digitizing archives and written materials. Amid the turmoil, these and other campaigns have emerged with remarkable resolve, intent on preserving Ukraine’s vulnerable art, antiquities, monuments, and historic buildings. Backed by local and international partners, these initiatives have yielded significant progress in rescuing artifacts, safeguarding historic sites, and ensuring that Ukraine’s cultural identity endures, even as the conflict wages on.

Until last summer, the NACP managed three databases of information on art and artifacts threatened by the conflict and individuals and legal entities who had been sanctioned for their endorsement of the invasion. In August 2024, the databases were temporarily taken down and are gradually being relaunched on the website of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence. The new website holds detailed information on hundreds of objects that have either been looted or destroyed by Russian troops. To quote the database home page, these activities seek to “erase the identity of the Ukrainian nation and prove to the world that an independent Ukraine does not exist.” Further, Russian archaeologists have stepped into occupied territories to conduct archaeological excavations that, while still conducted by licensed, professional experts, are occurring without proper authorization from the Ukrainian government. This exacerbates an already fraught legal context, in which the coordinated excavations of documented archaeological sites by qualified professionals are made illicit by the circumstances of illegal occupation and war criminality which made them possible.

Over a year ago, while the original databases were still under the management of the NACP, my colleagues and I at the Centre for Cultural Heritage Technology in Venice, Italy, automated the collection of data from the three repositories and collected information on the thousands of objects and tens of thousands of individuals flagged in the portal. This data was valuable because it recorded cultural objects that had been stolen from sites across occupied territories as well as objects known to be owned by individuals under sanctions. The NACP’s goal in collecting and publicising this information was to prevent the sale of these items in violation of sanctions; considering some of these artworks are valued at tens or even hundreds of millions of euros, these transactions—while illicit—could nonetheless provide some much-needed funds to the Russian government, struggling under the economic impact of the war.

This data also provided information on the known connections of sanctioned individuals – for example, the colleagues, family members, and other contacts of high-ranking oligarchs and politicians. By collecting all this information, we were able to reconstruct the network of Russian elite and investigate the ways in which this network operates. In our analysis of this data, we focused on answering two main questions:

What are the characteristics of the network structure of the Russian elite?
How influential, or central, are art collectors within this network?

We anticipated that the answers to these questions could provide some insights on the ways in which cultural goods circulate and the likelihood that art and antiquities may continue to be traded to fund a sanctioned government drowning in war debt.

Our analysis did in fact show some interesting characteristics of the network – some surprising and some less so. For example, art collectors, who are often wealthier and better connected than their non-collecting counterparts, hold key positions in the network (being closely linked, for example, to President Putin and other high-ranking politicians). This correlation suggests that wealth, social connections, and cultural capital not only signify power but also enable it. For example, oligarchs like Roman Abramovich and Darya Zhukova, with significant art collections, maintain extensive professional and personal networks, reinforcing the importance of wealth, taste, and connections in both building an art collection and consolidating political and social influence.

Further, despite international sanctions, some individuals have evidently continued to engage in the art market. Oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, sanctioned since 2014, has been implicated in transactions involving high-value artworks, circumventing restrictions through obscure financial arrangements. Similarly, the Panama Papers investigation by the ICIJ, released in 2016, revealed cases like Dmitry Rybolovlev’s use of shell corporations to conceal assets. These examples highlight what has been called the “criminogenic” nature of the art market—that the trade in cultural goods is inherently conducive to criminal activity through its lack of regulation, use of intermediaries, and the fact that traded objects are often easily concealable and hold immense value.

Our research into the structure of the network also confirmed the importance of institutions such as the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s primary intelligence agency, in the broader social network. While the FSB is a central node with extensive influence, it has no direct ties to art collectors, suggesting a separation between its operations and the cultural elite. At the same time, this suggests a crucial role is played by FSB Chairman Bortnikov, who acts as a bridge linking the agency to other clusters in the network.

This data, gradually being relaunched by Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, represents an underutilized tool for monitoring and addressing illicit activities related to cultural heritage and the circulation of cultural goods within sanctioned networks. It has allowed us to visualize for the first time the social network of the Russian oligarchy and bureaucratic and military elite, highlight patterns in its structure, and locate art collectors in its midst. By integrating these resources with international intelligence and auction records, law enforcement agencies can better track the provenance of cultural items, disrupt illicit trade, and enhance sanctions enforcement. Expanding and improving these databases through global cooperation is essential for protecting cultural heritage and preventing its misappropriation.

This research leveraged social network analysis, which is a flourishing field of data analysis that provides significant opportunities for further research with practical applications for tackling the illicit antiquities trade and mitigating the impact of conflict on cultural heritage. In so doing, it also provides insights as to where additional sanctions would be best applied, the relative influence and centrality of key individuals, and the relationship of art collectors to non-art collectors in the network. Ultimately, these findings provide a clearer understanding of the art market’s dynamics within elite networks and highlight opportunities to counteract the exploitation of cultural goods in the context of sanctions and geopolitical conflict.

As the war carries on and casualties continue to climb, I hope that the work of the NACP, Art Sanct Task Force, ALIPH, and other actors in Ukraine continues to mitigate the impact of the violence. I also look forward to additional research aimed at tackling the illicit trade in cultural goods and indirect financing of the war.