The door to an underground shelter where 365 Ukrainian civilians, including 70 children, were held captive for 28 days. Pages from a handwritten diary recounting the dramatic attacks on the Kharkiv region, with the sky turning red from the bombing in the darkness of what the author calls a “bloody night”. And then a wooden cross from Izyum, where the Russian army threw the bodies of 451 people, including little Olesia, who was just 9 years old.

These are just some of the objects that are on display at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where the exhibition “Displays of Horror”, curated by Yurii Savchuk and Taisiia Kryvoshei, with the support of Czech MEP Ondrej Kolar, has been set up. “Since the outbreak of the conflict, which has been going on since 2014, Russian troops have deliberately and intentionally destroyed Ukraine”, people can read at the beginning of the short but intense exhibition. “The large-scale invasion of Ukraine is the most documented armed conflict in history: the Russian army has openly committed crimes against civilians, before the whole world”. The objects on display evoke some of the bloodiest practices of the war: there are nails found inside the grenades, but also a dummy facing the wall and wearing a t-shirt covered in blood on the back. In its plenary debate, Parliament discussed the atrocities suffered by Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians, stressing the urgent need to agree on a lasting ceasefire to guarantee a just peace.