‘Novorossiya’ Museum in St. Petersburg Firebombed

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 2 – Yesterday, an unknown individual through an incendiary device through the window of the ‘Novorossiya’ Museum in St. Petersburg. Firefighters extinguished the blaze, and no serious harm was done to the collections, according to the Drugaya Rossiya VKontakte page.

            According to the party page as quoted by the Rufabula portal, “two national Bolsheviks” came to the museum, which opened on May 9, 2015, and is located in the basement of no 54, Decembrist Street in the Northern capital, in order to guard the facility against further attacks (rufabula.com/news/2016/05/01/museum-novorossia-burned).

            Among the exhibits in the museum are ones devoted to the history of conflict between Eastern and Western Ukraine since the 18^th century, life in the Donbas before the Russians arrived, “and also about destruction there in the course of the war.” As Rufabula notes, the museum often hosted measures organized by “supporters of imperial revenge.”

            In the coming days, the operators of the museum intend to organize several memorial measures “devoted to the second anniversary of the defeat of the anti-Maidan forces in Odessa.”  Drugaya Rossiya “does not exclude,” Rufabula says, that these plans motivated “’the enemies of the Russian World’” to firebomb the facility.

            At the same time, the party notes that “’the list of those who want to close the museum is constantly growing,’” and that the museum is in conflict not only “with local pro-Ukrainian nationalists and supporters of ‘the Right Sector’” but also with its landlords.

            One hopes that this firebombing will end without consequences, but unfortunately in the current Russian environment, it is entirely possible that it will be exploited by either the Putin regime or pro-Russian world forces or by both to launch new attacks on Ukrainian, pro-Ukrainian or simply opposition groups.