Culture lives in people, not in walls

The cathedral of the Pechersk Lavra, the Art Arsenal, the art museum in Kharkiv, the organ hall in Dnipro — and the entire costume collection of the Dovzhenko film studio burnt to ashes. The Lavra is almost a thousand years old and has survived the Mongols, the Bolsheviks and two world wars. These are not military targets; this is an attack on identity. Norway knows this struggle from its own history: stave churches burned through the centuries, yet the craft lived on, and Nynorsk was fought for because language is identity. Culture does not live in walls — it lives in people. As long as they are here, so is the culture.