Paintings that Ukraine sent to Poland to save from Russian bombs may not come home. The heirs of Polish prince Andrzej Lubomirski are going to court to prevent the return of two paintings from the Lviv Historical Museum's collection to Ukraine, which were taken to Poland at the start of the full-scale invasion, Polish outlet Rzeczpospolita reported.

The dispute turns a wartime rescue into a legal trap. The two works are a 16th-century "Portrait of Roksolana" and "Portrait of a Young Man" by the artist Aloys Reichan, now held at the Museum of Central Pomerania in Słupsk. They were brought to Poland as part of efforts to safeguard Ukrainian museum collections threatened by the war, and were shown in an exhibition of treasures from the Lviv Historical Museum.

A lawyer for the Lubomirski heirs, Maciej Obrębski, has asked the Słupsk district court to bar the paintings' transfer until a court case concludes, arguing the heirs believe the works belonged to the Lubomirski collection and must stay in Poland. The Lviv Historical Museum holds the opposite position: the paintings are part of Ukraine's state museum fund and were removed to Poland only temporarily, for safekeeping during the war.

The rescue is the reason the paintings are at risk

The paintings are in Poland for the same reason Ukraine has been moving its cultural heritage across the country and abroad throughout the war: to keep it from Russian destruction. Ukraine has evacuated collections, dismantled monuments, and shipped artworks out of harm's way from Kramatorsk to Kherson, and sent works abroad for exhibition and protection.

The exhibition organizers framed the loan in exactly those terms.

"The exhibits were brought to Poland as part of efforts to ensure the preservation of Ukrainian museum collections threatened by the ongoing war. The presence of the collection in Poland guarantees its safety," they wrote of the show, "The Borderlands of Europe — from the Treasury of the Lviv Historical Museum".

The irony is sharp. Works sent to Poland precisely because Poland was safe are now the ones Ukraine may struggle to bring back, caught not by Russian shelling but by a Polish ownership claim in a Polish court.

Ukraine has been here before, in 2024

This is not the first time a wartime loan to Poland has drawn an ownership claim, and the earlier case shows how Ukraine responded. A similar situation arose in 2024 during an exhibition at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

Then, after an analogous motion was filed, Ukraine removed the disputed exhibits back to Lviv ahead of schedule, and the court later refused to apply the requested protective measures.

The Lubomirskis are an old aristocratic house with claims across the border

The claim reaches back into the shared history that makes Polish-Ukrainian heritage disputes so tangled. The Lubomirskis were an influential princely family of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, holding large estates across what is now both Poland and Ukraine, and their members were patrons, politicians, soldiers, and collectors, according to Zahid.NET. 

In 1823, Henryk Lubomirski transferred his vast art collection to the Ossolineum institution in Lviv, and the Museum of the Lubomirski Princes was created on its basis as a separate part of the Ossolineum. That entangled history is the root of the present claim: collections assembled by Polish aristocrats in a city that was then part of Poland and is now part of Ukraine, whose ownership the two countries' institutions and heirs can read in very different ways.

The case sits against the backdrop of a fraught moment in Polish-Ukrainian relations, strained this year by disputes over historical memory. 

An American activist who spent years repeating Russian talking points told her followers she had been wrong about Ukraine. Laura Loomer, a far-right blogger and ally of US President Donald Trump, shared her impressions with hundreds of thousands of followers after visiting the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the Dormition Cathedral, damaged by a Russian drone strike. 

The visit is the public face of a documented reversal. Loomer long echoed Kremlin narratives and criticized US aid to Ukraine, and after a fact-finding trip to Kyiv in July 2026, she acknowledged she had been "propagandized by Russian media."

"I was living in a media echo chamber, and I was propagandized by Russian media on social media to believe those things. So I came to Ukraine to see the country for myself," she wrote.

The Lavra tour, alongside senior Ukrainian officials, was the culmination of that trip, which also took her to the mass graves in Bucha and through Russian strikes on the capital.

"Putin droned Jesus Christ. The Woke Reich and Russia don't want you to see this video..." Loomer wrote on X, attaching a four-minute clip recorded inside the Lavra's main cathedral.

Ukrainian officials welcomed visit

Loomer toured the Lavra with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Tetiana Berehna and First Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Serhii Kyslytsia.

The National Reserve said she was shown the Tower of St. John the Recluse, the Mystetskyi Arsenal building, and the Dormition Cathedral, all of which were damaged in the 15 June Russian attack, and was briefed on the restoration.

"It was interesting to sit down and talk to LauraLoomer and then to go to Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra on Wednesday," Kyslytsia wrote, thanking Loomer for "taking the initiative and traveling to Ukraine at this time."

Berehna framed it as a matter of witness.

"Russia is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage while Ukrainians simply want to live, create, raise children, and build our future. Thank you, Laura, for visiting Ukraine," she said.

Dormition Cathedral lost most of its roof

The site Loomer filmed carries a specific loss. The Dormition Cathedral lost more than 80% of its roof in the Russian attack, and over a dozen sites across the National Reserve were damaged.

The cathedral is not incidental to the war on heritage. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the holiest places in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, founded in 1051.

A Russian strike damaging it is the kind of event Ukraine has documented across its cultural landscape: nearly 2,000 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since 2022, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general.

Russia's strike at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra prompted condemnation from European foreign ministers. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that "For us French, this would be equivalent to bombing Notre-Dame or the Basilica of Saint-Denis." 

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna said Russia had "once again demonstrated its barbarity and contempt for humanity's shared heritage," describing the Lavra as a UNESCO World Heritage site and "one of Christianity's holiest monasteries" that had "been a place of worship for nearly a thousand years."

The European Commission officially recommended terminating the €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale due to the reopening of Russia's pavilion. European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen announced the recommendation on X.

The Russian pavilion opened at the 61st Venice Biennale in April 2026, following its absence in 2022 and 2024. Its commissioner is Anastasia Karneeva, daughter of a senior figure at the Rostec state defense corporation and a former FSB general, and is financed by the oligarch Leonid Mikhelson's Novatek company.

Ukraine sanctioned Karneeva and four other Russian cultural figures at the pavilion in April 2026 as "cultural propagandists" spreading Russian state narratives. Over 20 countries condemned Russia's participation. Seventy-one Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegates from 29 countries called for the pavilion's cancellation. 

Russia's culture: genocide

The largest Russian attack on Kyiv's cultural institutions occurred in May 2026. It damaged the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU), the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, the National Music Academy of Ukraine, the National Center "Ukrainian House," the National Library of Ukraine named after Yaroslav the Wise, and the Kyiv Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet for Children and Youth.

The National "Chornobyl" Museum sustained significant damage. Numerous architectural monuments were affected, including the Kyiv Contract House and the Post Station.

Three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Ukraine and their buffer zones have suffered damage. Damage in the historic center of Odesa is among the documented cases.

The EU's recommendation escalates from the April 2026 warning that the Commission could freeze the grant.

"The Commission officially recommends EACEA to terminate the €2 million grant to the Venice Biennale. This follows a thorough assessment of the replies from the Biennale to justify the re-opening of Russia's pavilion," Virkkunen wrote.

Ukraine called on the Biennale leadership to maintain the principled position it held from 2022 to 2024, excluding Russia.

 Italian government opposes EU action

The European Commission's recommendation runs against the Italian government's position on Russian participation. Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini criticized Brussels' position and did not object to Russia's participation.

Veneto regional president Alberto Stefani called the EU's actions "unacceptable," arguing that art should "facilitate moments of cultural dialogue, which can become opportunities to forge connections, especially when official diplomacy cannot find solutions."

The Biennale replied to Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli that there had been "no violation of the rules" in admitting Russia and that "the sanctions against the Russian Federation were fully observed."

Sweden is joining Ukraine to document ancient Cossack sites that Russia's Kakhovka dam attack revealed. Both countries have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to preserve the thousands of archaeological sites revealed after Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam, according to the Ukrainian Embassy in Sweden. 

The massive flood that killed at least 100 people drained the reservoir that had submerged the Great Meadow (Velykyi Luh), historic heartland of the Zaporozhian Cossacks for nearly 70 years. 

The Kakhovka dam, which Russia destroyed on 6 June 2023, was built by the Soviet Union in 1956. Its reservoir covered settlements, ancient burials, Ottoman-era fortresses, and Sich-era church sites.

The dam's destruction caused Ukraine's largest environmental disaster of the war, inflicting over $14 billion in damages, flooding 80 settlements. 

What did drained reservoir uncover? 

Ukrainian Embassy states that Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam in 2023 was a terrible humanitarian and environmental catastrophe for Ukraine. At the same time, "after the water receded, huge territories of the Great Meadow, which had been flooded for decades, were opened."

"Together with them — thousands of archaeological and historical monuments: ancient burials, settlements, ship remains, traces of various eras and wars," the diplomats said. 

The drained territories remain an active war zone. Russian forces have been using the exposed reservoir bed as a staging ground for infantry maneuvers to try to bypass Ukrainian positions in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. 

Deal: International Center for Great Meadow

The Memorandum of Cooperation unites three Ukrainian entities — the Zaporizhzhia Regional State Administration, Zaporizhzhia National University, and the Khortytsia National Reserve — with three Swedish museums (National Maritime, Transport, and Military) and the International Congress of Maritime Museums.

The partners plan to establish an International Center for Research and Preservation of the Great Meadow, to serve as a hub for scientific work, education, archaeological research, international cooperation, and post-war restoration.

The Ukrainian side framed the arrangement as an equal partnership rather than aid, offering scientific expertise and, in the embassy's phrasing, "unique experience of working in crisis conditions."

"The found monuments need urgent documentation, research, and preservation. It's about protecting memory that Russia is trying to destroy," the embassy said.

Amphion: signing at Sweden's greatest naval victory over Russia

The signing ceremony took place at Sweden's National Maritime Museum in Stockholm, with the preserved stern of the Amphion — King Gustav III's flagship during the 1788–1790 Russo-Swedish War — as the historical backdrop.

That war concluded with the Battle of Svensksund in July 1790, where a Swedish coastal fleet defeated a larger Russian force in the Gulf of Finland. It remains Sweden's greatest naval victory over the Russian Empire and preserved Swedish territorial integrity against Catherine the Great's expansionist campaign.

The Ukrainian embassy said the venue reflected the project's focus on shared European history and on countering Russia's attempts to erase Ukrainian cultural identity.