‘A living, moving exhibition’: Ukraine Museum opens in Berlin air-raid bunker | Germany
Descending into the windowless basement of a second-world war air-raid shelter built for civilians in central Berlin is probably eerily enough evocative of what it means to endure life in a conflict environment.
But with a modern twist, before you even step into the first room of the city’s new building. Ukrainian Museum Inside the bunker, visitors are “targeted” by a Russian drone and see themselves in the firing line on the gun’s camera screen, just before its operator prepares to fire the fatal shot.
“We want to show people something about the physical reality of the conflict,” says Wieland Giebel, one of the museum’s curators. “We hope to tell them that this is a war going on here and now in Europe, and that we are ignoring it at our peril.”
The museum opened the same week as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was created from the remnants of the war and was assembled with the help of the National Museum of Military History in Kiev and front-line troops of the 7th Rapid Response Corps in Pokrovsk.
It chronicles the occupation by depicting destroyed equipment and images of destruction and death, as well as considering the historical roots of the occupation and describing the lives of those it irrevocably affected. It is also a tribute to Ukrainians and their resilience.
“People are in danger of war fatigue,” Giebel says. “This is a lively, moving exhibition that aims to shake them up.”
He says the privately funded museum, the only one of its kind in the world outside Ukraine, will remain at least as long as the war continues. “Every anniversary is too much.”
In 2014, Giebel and fellow curator Enno Lenze founded the Berlin Story Bunker, which hosts historical event exhibitions. Built in 1942, the building is so solidly constructed that it remains an indestructible part of the cityscape.
The men regularly travel to Ukraine, delivering aid and equipment, including bulletproof vests for children, and bringing new objects and bits of information to the museum.
One of the items placed in the center of the museum is a silver-gray Fiat Scudo with a shattered windshield, a large tear on the roof and blood-stained seats. It served as a “social taxi” evacuating the elderly in Kherson and took children to hospitals before being hit by a Russian drone in April 2025.
Footage of the Russian drone recorded before the crash and tracked by Ukrainian intelligence on the Russian Telegram channel shows how the minibus was deliberately targeted and 28-year-old aid worker Oleg Salnyk was killed. His bloody face, marked with red lines, was used in the resulting Russian propaganda footage.
His friend and colleague Oleg Degusarov, who was in the minibus, survived the attack, but had shrapnel stuck in his neck.
20 Russian UAVs, collected with the help of the Ukrainian army, hang from the ceiling of the museum. These include the cheapest, Molniya, built for around €100 (£87) using common items such as duct tape, poles and a disposable camera used to throw grenades and kill civilians.
The largest missile in the exhibit was rebuilt in eight pieces using a 3D printer “because we weren’t allowed to import the original,” Lenze says. He wanted to show “how big a cruise missile is when it flies towards you.”
Next to it is a large photograph of the apartment block in Kiev that was badly damaged by the original missile. Former TV anchor and frontline reporter Roman Sukhan, who contributed to the exhibition, explains that the missile killed his friend, a doctor who lived in the flats.
“War is always very close,” he says. He thinks the exhibition will also show Germans “what a threat Putin poses to everyone.”
Germany is one of Kiev’s biggest arms suppliers, a key diplomatic supporter, and hosts some 1.3 million Ukrainian refugees; But opinion remains divided over the extent to which German taxpayers should continue to finance arms shipments.
The curators admit that they are not impartial in warning of the danger of increasing support for Russia-friendly parties. Their exhibition also harshly points out a number of Putin apologists among the political elite and underlines the “dangerous” role they have played and continue to play in public debates by downplaying the threat posed by the Russian President. One of the slogans on the wall is “Help or be a jerk.”
Lenze and Giebel are not ones for subtle gestures. They were celebrated on the first anniversary of the invasion in 2023 for persuading once-reluctant officials to allow them to place the wreckage of a Russian T72 tank pulled from the outskirts of Kiev outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.
Former Ukrainian deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar, who worked as an assistant at the museum until 2023, said: “My advice to Germany is, whatever you do, do not get rid of your shelters.”
