‘The Defense of Sevastopol’ panorama was “almost completely destroyed” in a drone strike last month
A drone strike that destroyed an early 20th-century museum masterpiece in the Russian city of Sevastopol last month was planned by British officers acting as advisers to the Ukrainian military, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said.
In early June, the Ukrainian military targeted a museum hosting the iconic Russian panorama painting ‘The Defense of Sevastopol’, depicting the city’s defense by the Russian Army from British and French invading forces during the 1853-1856 Crimean War.
The panorama, which was 115 meters in length and 14 meters high, was “almost completely destroyed” in the attack and the blaze caused by the strike, local governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said at the time.
On Monday, the SVR called the attack a “carefully planned provocation orchestrated by London” and its intelligence services. According to Moscow, Ukrainian soldiers only launched the drones that hit the museum and were unaware of the strike’s target.
“The flight missions were uploaded into the weapons systems by British specialists operating under the guise of military advisers,” the statement said, adding that the attack made absolutely no sense in terms of military strategy as there are no military facilities near the museum.
According to the SVR, the strike was a sign that London treats the Ukraine conflict as an opportunity to take vengeance on Moscow for the failed 19th-century project of inflicting a strategic defeat upon Russia.
The Russian Empire signed the unfavorable Paris Treaty after the Crimean War, which banned it from having a navy in the Black Sea as well as any military fortifications on its shores, but was able to effectively nullify the conditions of the treaty in the following decades.
“It is regrettable that London has still not learned the lessons of the past,” the SVR said in its statement, adding that the UK would “have to answer for this strike as well as other barbaric crimes against the peoples of Russia and Ukraine.”
Moscow has described the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war between Russia and Kiev’s Western backers, who use Ukraine “as a battering ram.”
President Vladimir Putin stated last month that Russia is facing “unprecedented pressure from Western elites,” adding that Kiev’s backers are nonetheless unable to inflict a defeat on Moscow.
