‘Shestovytsia’ airport is located in the vicinity of the eponymous village in the Chernihiv region. Built in the late 1980s, it operated both national (e.g. to Lviv, Odesa, Donetsk, Crimea) and international flights until 1994.

But the airport did not function long till it was shut down in 2002. However, the site came to be known thanks to its sophisticated design that was elaborated by a team of Ukrainian artists, one of them being Volodymyr Zinchenko, whose mosaics adorn the airport’s facade. 

Volodymyr Zinchenko was born in the Chernihiv region. He is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and a Merited Artist of Ukraine. Eight panels of his making on various historical topics cover the airport’s front wall and have become valuable Ukrainian monumental artworks. Despite the fact that the airport ceased to function a long time ago and its airstrip is overgrown with grass, the mosaics have been carefully preserved.

Everything changed with the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Chernihiv region, a border area adjacent to Russia, became one of the main targets for shelling during the Russian troops’ offensive that resulted in the airport building’s destruction.  Six out of eight unique mosaic panels were demolished, too. Also, interior ceramic panels and plaster decorations created by other Chernihiv artists and sculptors were shattered as well. It is even impossible now to dismantle the surviving parts of these art monuments in order to preserve them.

The unique monumental artworks, which were an inseparable and invaluable part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage, have been lost forever.

The site that once held memories has now turned into a memory itself.