Restoration of the panorama "Defense of Sevastopol" after the attack of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will take from 5 years

The restoration of the panorama museum "The Defense of Sevastopol in 1854-1855", which was damaged as a result of the attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), will take about five years. This forecast was made on June 11 by Mikhail Smorodkin, director of the Sevastopol Defense Museum.

"I can only rely on the experience of Soviet artists. Today I cannot make other estimates. <...> That is, from five years, it concerns both the restoration of the building and the painting of the canvas," said Smorodkin.

He noted that 10 fragments of the canvas were removed from the burning building. Primary measures are currently being carried out with the surviving parts, after which they will be handed over to restorers who will find out whether it will be possible to recreate or restore the canvas.

"This is an unprecedented event for our museum and the museum community as a whole. Two fragments of the original painting by Franz Alekseevich Roubaud, which were destroyed in June 1942, have returned to us," he said.

Smorodkin noted that the exhibition was scheduled for June 11 a year ago, and the incident was an unprecedented event for the museum community. Ekaterina Malinovskaya, head of the Crimean War History Department, added that for the townspeople, the panorama is part of the cultural code and worldview.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces strike on the "Defense of Sevastopol" panorama. What is known

On the same day, it became known that 10 fragments of the canvas were saved from the panorama museum "Defense of Sevastopol 1854-1855" during the fire, they are safe. Currently, a team of museum specialists continues to work inside the building. It is also known that experts of the Investigative Committee (IC) of the Russian Federation have found fragments of the drone that attacked the museum. The attack itself was captured on video recordings, which were handed over to the investigation.

The fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked this museum became known the day before in the morning. The governor of the city, Mikhail Razvozhaev, clarified at the same time that the object was almost completely destroyed as a result of the impact. Smorodkin, in an interview with Izvestia, suggested that the entire work of Roubaud, the author of the panorama canvas, could be in danger of complete extinction.

Based on this, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called the incident a barbaric act and offered to pay tickets to representatives of the UNESCO secretariat in Sevastopol so that they could personally see what the Ukrainian militants had done with this work of art. In turn, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out that the Russian Federation was right in the conflict in Ukraine. He stated that the attempts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to defeat history are futile.