The director of the Sevastopol Defense Museum assessed the consequences of the attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces drones

The panorama "The Defense of Sevastopol in 1854-1855" by the legendary Russian master Franz Roubaud was in danger of complete destruction as a result of an attack by drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Mikhail Smorodkin, director of the museum where the painting is on display, told Izvestia on June 10.

"This is a very big loss — our main museum object has been damaged — our panorama, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1942. It was restored, and today a copy of our panorama by Franz Alekseevich Roubaud has been damaged again. <...> One can say that there are irreparable things," he said.

Smorodkin clarified that the impact was recorded at 02:48 Moscow time and fell on the roof of the cultural institution, where the fire started, which has not been extinguished so far.

"A few hours of ignition gives us the right to assume that it (panorama. — Ed.), most likely, destroyed, if not completely, then on a large scale," he added.

According to the director of the museum, it is not yet possible to assess the damage caused to the work of art. He explained that it will be possible to do this when the staff of the Ministry of Emergency Situations will allow experts to get inside.

The AFU attack on the panorama "Defense of Sevastopol 1854-1855" became known on June 10. The governor of the city, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said that as a result of the incident, the building where the object was stored was almost completely destroyed. Representatives of the museum community said that some of the original fragments by Rubo managed to miraculously survive for the second time.

The official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, commenting on the incident, called the attack on the "Defense of Sevastopol" by the Ukrainian Armed Forces a barbaric act.