In Kharkiv, Ukraine, the Palace of Industry, known as Derzhprom, was rocked by Russian “guided bombs” on October 29. The overall structure appears to have remained intact, but videos taken shortly after the October 29 strikes show blown out windows and debris all over Freedom Square, where the 13-story building sits.
The complex hosts office spaces and court rooms for the regional government. According to Irina Gorodetska of Ukrainian Cultural Heritage, the strike hit Derzhprom’s entrance, where a courtroom is located nearby, shattering much of the building’s facade upon impact. Gorodetska noted that the specific bomb type that hit Derzhprom is Grom-E1, a weapon designed to splinter upon impact, maximizing damage to its impact area.
In 2023, UNESCO named Derzhprom in a list of 20 cultural sites in Ukraine that “benefit from the highest level of immunity from military attacks as well as threats of it making it a target.” In the same statement, UNESCO said that “non-compliance with these clauses [i.e. an attack on Derzhprom] would be qualified as a ‘serious violation’ to the 1954 Hague Convention and its Second Protocol.”
UNESCO disclosed that it would “financially support the organization of trainings by UNESCO for Ukrainian security forces and judicial personnel, to enhance their skills in protecting cultural heritage. This comes in addition to the various training courses for Ukrainian cultural professionals and heritage preventive protection and rehabilitation measures carried out by UNESCO since the outbreak of the war.”
The Palace of Industry, completed in 1928 by Sergei Serafimov, was just recently restored after a multiyear renovation process. (Western readers may recognize it from the cover of Reyner Banham’s Theory of Design in the First Machine Age.) The building is considered eastern Europe’s first skyscraper and recognized as a pinnacle of the 20th century avant-garde. Its attack on October 29 immediately drew the ire of myriad architecture historians, and even Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
UNESCO hasn’t issued a statement in response to the attacks on Derzhprom.
The attack came the same night a 500-ton aerial bomb was dropped on Kharkiv’s city center that also hit a hospital.
