Evacuating Ukraine's Ancient Stone Guardians

According to the Facebook page of the 25th Separate Airborne Sicheslav Brigade (18/2/2026), soldiers of the Sicheslav Brigade, together with museum workers, volunteers, and philanthropists, evacuated from Vasylivka in the Synelnykivskyi District of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast the Polovtsian Babas of the XI–XIII centuries – unique stone monuments of the steppe era.

Previously, as reported by the online media Suspilne, Ukrainian paratroopers and historians had also evacuated two ancient Polovtsian statues from Petropavlivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region, to the same museum to protect them from war damage (Ukrainian Paratroopers Evacuate Ancient Polovtsian Statues from Petropavlivka Mezha, 13 November 2025)

soldiers of the 25th Separate Airborne Brigade, together with historians, evacuated two Polovtsian baba statues as the front line approached: the distance from the settlement to the combat zone exceeded 45 kilometers.
Two statues were saved thanks to the efforts of volunteers and specialists. The artifacts were found on the community’s territory, previously stored under a concrete layer. Nina Sergienko noted that this is not a common practice for artifacts, but in this case such a step helped preserve them from destruction. [...] To move the sculptures to Dnipro, heavy machinery was employed – a truck and a crane. A representative of the 25th Separate Airborne Brigade, Valeriy Kasianenko, said that the soldiers had a clear view of how the Russian army was destroying historical monuments amid active hostilities, so they decided to help with the evacuation.
“We understand that Russia is waging war against Ukraine on different levels, including at the level of history. For us it is important to preserve the heritage of our nation and not let the Russians destroy, damage, or take it for themselves”.
The statues were delivered to the museum in Dnipro. According to the representative, the evacuation lasted almost seven hours, and the transport covered more than 120 kilometers. After the work is completed, the exhibits are planned to be kept at the Dnipro Historical Museum named after Dmytro Yavornytsky. Yuriy Fanihin, Deputy Director for Records and Preservation of Museum Valuables, said that since the start of the large-scale invasion, 27 stone statues have been evacuated. [...] The museum owner added that until the end of the war these exhibits will remain in the museum’s courtyard, after which they will be returned to Petropavlivka."

Polovtsian stone stelae, popularly known as "babas" (from the Turkic word baba, meaning "ancestor"), are unique anthropomorphic monuments created by nomadic Turkic peoples between the 9th and 13th centuries. These statues, carved from sandstone or limestone, were typically placed atop kurgans (burial mounds) as memorial markers to honor the deceased and serve as ritual sites for ancestor worship. Though they represent both male and female figures with intricate details of clothing and weaponry, their primary function was to act as spiritual guardians of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Today, they remain vital archaeological evidence of the medieval nomadic cultures that once dominated the vast plains of modern-day Ukraine and southern Russia.

My problem with this is that this is treated as a portable antiquities issue (by portableising the "art"). The baba however sits in a site in the context of other things deposited or present at that site - such as a burial, or ephemeral traces of offerings and commemorative rituals at various times. By digging them out roughly and loading them on a truck, any traces areound the base of the stone will have been losgt, the whole site disrupted. "Puttiung it back" is not going to undo that destruction of evidence.