What is now Ukraine had not only a long history of interweave with Russian history and culture, but a beginning point thousands of years before the Christian era, in which substantial urban centres – but devoid of large public buildings – were established, long before the urban centres of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Ukraine’s glorious sweep of fascinating visual productivity, from the handsomely decorated pottery and intricately forged metals of antiquity to splendid icons and textiles that emerge in the medieval period as part of a complex identity the shaping of which offers part of the foundation for understanding today’s horrific events.