Latvia’s National Archives has returned 19 sets of historical documents to Ukraine, the State Archival Service said on 17 June. The records date from 1860 to 1940.
The transfer comes two days after Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, put the number of cultural objects looted from occupied territory since 2014 at more than 7.8 million.
The documents include reports, parish registers, and a design drawing for a prayer house used by Evangelical Lutheran and German settler communities, the service said in a statement. They come from what are now Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Odesa, and Volyn oblasts.
Researchers found the records in 2025 while working through the holdings of Latvia’s State Historical Archive. Latvia’s archive concluded they were not part of its national heritage and should return to Ukraine under bilateral agreements.
Anatolii Khromov, who heads Ukraine’s State Archival Service, said some of the documents come from the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi area, where he began his career. Those will go to the State Archive of Odesa Oblast.
Two of Russia’s largest museums hold more than 110,000 catalogued items from present-day Ukraine. Russian officials have called returning them legally impossible, Texty reported.
Recovering heritage taken from Ukraine usually means restitution claims and years of legal effort. The Latvian transfer required neither.
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