Ukraine's Deputy Culture Minister: UNESCO mission is not going to visit Crimea without Kiev's invitation
Without providing access to Crimea for Ukrainian experts, the visit of the monitoring mission of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee will not be possible. Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Culture of Ukraine Tamara Mazur said, while on Radio Krym.Realii, that Ukrainian authorities will not invite international experts to the annexed peninsula.
“This monitoring mission can only come at the exclusive invitation of Ukraine. UNESCO has said that Ukraine should invite them when an opportunity arises. However, we will not invite a monitoring mission while our experts themselves do not have access to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea,” Mazur said.
On the 14th of July in Istanbul, the control of the state of the Chersonesus museum was discussed during the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee. A resolution was adopted which called for the UNESCO mission of the Committee on Cultural Heritage to visit Chersonesus.
In 2013, the “Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora” was made a part of the UNESCO World Heritage List through the initiative of Ukraine. UNESCO listed the object as Ukrainian.
In August 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an instruction to include the monuments and the territory of the National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos in the Crimea into the Unified State Register of Cultural Heritage Sites of the Peoples of the Russian Federation.
According to the data of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, there are 99 museums in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine that are storing up to two million of museum artifacts.