Across Ukraine, artists, gallerists, curators and museum directors are desperately but carefully unhooking, wrapping and stashing away the country’s hefty cultural endowment as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s onslaught closes in. Statues, stained-glass windows and monuments are being covered with shrapnel-proof material. Basement bunkers are crammed with paintings.

“There is an egomaniac in Moscow who doesn’t care about killing children, let alone destroying art,” said the director of a major Ukrainian gallery.

“If our history and heritage are to survive, all art must go underground,” he said.