Archaeologists say cave complex must be preserved for ‘indisputable and cultural value’
Dmytro Perov was at his day job, analysing planning applications for Kyiv city council, when he saw a familiar address – the derelict house in central Kyiv built by his family in the late 1800s that was confiscated by the Bolsheviks. The owners of the site now wanted to build on it and had made the unlikely claim that their office was based at the house, which Perov knew had no roof and collapsed walls.
Timur Bobrovskyy, head of archaeology at the St Sofia state museum in Kyiv, has hailed it a significant and special discovery and concluded that it must be preserved for its “indisputable and cultural value”. Bobrovskyy assesses that the caves are more than 1,000 years old and have similarities to “medieval monastery cave complexes”. Judging by some of the markings, the caves have had visitors before Perov, but he surmised they had not realised their significance.
But efforts of this kind are not always successful. Perov’s fight is part of an bigger effort by civil society actors against the rampant corruption among the country’s elites, a longstanding problem in Ukraine that has endured despite the war. Bobrovskyy has described it as a “second front”. Kyiv deputy Ksenia Semenova, who regularly campaigns to halt the destruction of the city’s cultural heritage, has said under the new law would she will have no tools to stop Kyiv from turning into a “concrete jungle”. Unfortunately, she said, developers “don’t know how to make a restored building commercially valuable”.
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