Ukraine is a country spectacularly rich in ancient archaeology, whether of the Scythians, with their horses and finely worked gold, who ranged across the steppes from the ninth to second centuries BC, or of the intriguing stone age Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, which produced remarkable, elaborately decorated ceramics and huge, city-scale “megasites”, or of the Greeks, who established trading emporiums on the Black Sea coast.

But in a country with already limited resources for cultural protection, Russia’s full-scale invasion has meant an onslaught of destruction to this rich record of the past.