The war, which broke out in Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022, has left cities and infrastructure destroyed. While hostilities continue, war damage, including architectural monuments, is being recorded. The following paper is part of these activities. It aims to emphasise the scale of the destruction of cultural heritage sites and to identify the possibilities of their reconstruction and restoration. This study analyses international doctrinal documents and recommendations on the protection of historic monuments (e.g., ICOMOS), Ukrainian regulations and the literature on the reconstruction of historic urban layouts and architecture after the Second World War, primarily in Poland. The research is also based on methods used in restoration work, architectural survey documentation, and historical and comparative analysis. The war damage (as of May 2022) is discussed in general.
Russian rocket attacks are inflicting damage to sites in almost all of Ukraine, but the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Lugansk, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions have suffered the most. This paper presents examples of destruction in selected regions surveyed directly by the authors — the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Chernihiv and Mykolaiv regions. In Kyiv, mainly residential buildings and shopping centres have been destroyed, whereas in the Mykolaiv region the scale of destruction has been greater, including residential build- ings, schools and Orthodox churches. The conclusions provide proposals for the post-war reconstruction of selected buildings.