Summary

On 1 March 2022, Russia launched a missile strike on the Kyiv TV tower. The missiles targeting the TV tower landed on the territory known as Babyn Yar, the site of one of the worst massacres of the Holocaust. Historical references, particularly ones related to the Second World War and the Holocaust, have been continuously weaponised as part of Russia’s propaganda machine. Given their claims about the ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, the damaging of one of the Holocaust’s most significant symbolic sites is particularly ironic. Our investigation seeks to examine the confluence of past and present in this fraught landscape, drawing together a detailed analysis of the recent strike on the TV tower and a spatial reconstruction of the Babyn Yar site—a complex ravine system that used to run through this part of Kyiv. -FA