Legal Aspects of Cultural Heritage Preservation in the Conditions of War

The article observes the problems of protecting the cultural heritage of Ukrainein armed conflict. Issues of violation of rules of international humanitarian law aimed at protecting cultural values, namely attempts to cause irreparable losses to the cultural identity of a certain society through the destruction of cultural values, are under special attention in the article.The article predicates importance of the illegal removal of cultural values from the occupied territories and the looting of cultural monuments. Attention is given to the problem of rescue and evacuation of cultural objects. The provisions of international documents regarding the protection of cultural objects, the issue of implementation of international legal norms into national legislation, were considered.The article deals with the problem of protecting cultural values in Crimea which was occupied by Russia, and certain parts of Donbas which are out of control of Ukraine since 2014. The facts of violation of international treaties and conventions that are related to the protection of cultural property caused by Russia aggressive full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, are considered. The relevance of the article is conditioned with unprecedented violations of universally recognized principles of international law, primarily the humanization of military operations in the modern world and, in particular, with a critical need to protect cultural heritage in armed conflict. The protection of cultural values is an integral part of the warfare rules. The significance of cultural values and cultural objects are determined not only by their economic weight, but primarily by the fact that they contain the history and national self-consciousness. It is emphasized on urgent issue of broad implementation of international humanitarian law norms and the international law of the protection of cultural values into the national, in particular criminal legislation of Ukraine. In addition, it is extremely important to improve the quality of national investigations of war crimes, to document war crimes, to create an evidence base that will a llow Ukraine to defend its interests effectively in international courts and to administer justice at the national level.