Hi all,
On behalf of the organizing team for Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine I’m
writing to inform you of our decision not to submit photos for the
international round.
Traditionally, Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine has been one of the biggest
WLM local contests in the world, as well as among the biggest projects
supported by Wikimedia Ukraine.
This year, Ukraine and subsequently the contest has suffered from Russia’s
full-scale invasion. Particularly, for security reasons the organizers had
to limit submissions only to photos taken before February 24th, 2022, which
is the date when Russia openly invaded Ukraine.
Despite the limitations, we managed to organize the contest in 2022 and
attract almost 14,000 photos of Ukrainian cultural heritage from almost 300
participants. They illustrate over 5,300 monuments, including 351 monuments
depicted for the first time.
However, the local organizers will not be submitting Ukrainian photos for
the international round because of the international organizers’ decisions
to accept photos from Russia on the international stage. To be clear, we do
not support this decision and had asked the international team not to
accept Russian photos in the international round.
While we fully support the spread of free knowledge in various forms, we
believe that it is not appropriate to promote on the international level
photos from the country that wages a brutal war against Ukraine, kills
thousands of Ukrainians – and systematically destroys and steals Ukrainian
cultural, architectural and archaeological monuments.
Besides, Russia’s war has deprived Ukrainian photos of equal conditions in
the competition. While daily life in Russia continues largely as normal,
Ukrainian photographers have had to operate in extremely difficult
conditions and under many limitations – both the formal ones imposed for
security reasons and the overall situation in Ukraine (power blackouts,
problems with internet connectivity, personal hardship etc.)
Therefore, we cannot accept Ukrainian photos competing alongside Russian
ones – we do not think that in current circumstances it is the right thing
to announce which Ukrainian photos are better and which are worse than
Russian ones.
We are grateful to Ukrainian participants and volunteers who have made the
contest possible this year against the odds, as well as to international
organizers for their hard work in supporting the largest photo contest in
the Wikimedia ecosystem.
Best regards,
Olga Milianovych
Member of the organizing committee for Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine
(Disclaimer: Antanana is a member of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine
organizing committee. Due to her currently serving on the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees she recused herself from taking part in
discussions and making decisions on this topic).