Latvia hands over historical documents of Ukrainian origin to Ukraine

On Tuesday, 16 June 2026, a formal ceremony was held at the Latvian State Historical Archives to mark the handover of historical documents of Ukrainian origin by the National Archives of Latvia.

The documents were handed over to the State Archival Service of Ukraine by Māra Sprūdža, Director of the National Archives of Latvia. The collection was received by Anatolii Khromov, Head of the State Archival Service of Ukraine.

The ceremony was attended by Baiba Braže, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia; representatives of the Latvian Ministry of Culture; and Kateryna Pasynchuk, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim of Ukraine in Latvia.

During research into the collections of the Latvian State Historical Archives in 2025, a collection of documents was discovered whose origins can be traced back to the territory of Ukraine between 1860 and 1940. The collection of documents includes reports, certificates, parish registers, drawings of a house of prayer, and other materials relating to Evangelical Lutheran congregations, schools and German settler communities in the western and southern regions of Ukraine – the Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Odesa and Volyn regions. Having assessed the origin and ownership of the documents, the National Archives of Latvia concluded that they should not be included in Latvia’s national documentary heritage and should be transferred to the State Archival Service of Ukraine in accordance with international principles on the preservation of cultural heritage and agreements on archival cooperation between the two countries.

Archival experts believe that the documents arrived in Latvia after the Second World War, along with Latvian archival materials returned from evacuation. As a result of the transfer of cultural artefacts carried out by Nazi Germany, both Latvian and Ukrainian documentary collections were taken westwards during the war and ended up in what are now the Czech Republic and Poland.

During the post-war re-evacuation processes, some documents remained outside their countries of origin, and today’s handover is one of the rare instances that allows us to better understand the history of the transfer of wartime documents and to mitigate the consequences of the war in the sphere of cultural heritage.