International Cooperation Programme for the Preservation of Ukrainian Cultural Heritage in the Context of Armed Conflict

Summary The research examines possible ways of preserving cultural heritage sites in the context of military conflict in the example of the escalating situation in Ukraine (from March 2014 to 2025), and provides recommendations for creating an infrastructure that will preserve cultural property for future generations in the event of war or natural disaster. The article analyses the experience of international cooperation on the preservation and digitisation of cultural heritage, and considers proposals for the new mechanism’s development of international cooperation to further improve measures to preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage through the implementation of state and public initiatives. In particular, as a result of the application of semiotic and axiological methods, attention is drawn to the special legal protection of its objects presented in regulatory documents (international protocols, provisions of conventions and laws of Ukraine). Since the protection of material objects of historical and cultural heritage in wartime is mostly impossible, an important task under martial law is to create an inventory of cultural objects to be digitised, and to develop specific projects for digitising cultural objects. As a result, there is an urgent need to update modern legal requirements and methods of digitisation, approaches to the implementation of state policy in the field of cultural heritage protection, and effective coordination between international organisations and national institutions working in the field of cultural heritage protection in the areas of armed conflict.