Mariupol's Retro Video Game Museum Destroyed In Russian Invasion

We're now one month into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the level of death and destruction is hard to quantify. Thousands of innocent civilians have lost their lives, and millions have been forced to flee the country to escape the conflict.

Russia has been relentless in its bombing of Ukraine's major cities, including the tactically advantageous southern port city Mariupol, which has been the subject of a particularly brutal siege over the last few days. As reported by PCMag UK, one of the buildings to have been wiped out during the attacks was a museum dedicated to the preservation of retro video games and computers.

Founded back in 2003, Mariupol's Club 8-Bit museum contained an impressive collection of over 120 retro computers, ranging from ZX Spectrum systems, old-school Apple and Atari hardware, retro keyboards, and even Soviet-era computers. Gizmodo shared an excellent video of the museum just a few years ago. Unfortunately, the building - and the collection - is all gone.

"That's it, the Mariupol computer museum is no longer there," the museum's owner Dmitry Cherepanov wrote on Facebook. "All that is left from my collection that I have been collecting for 15 years is just fragments of memories on the FB page, website and radio station of the museum."

Cherepanov, who also lost his home in the attacks, is thankfully unharmed. "There is neither my museum nor my house.And it hurts, but I will definitely survive it and find a new home."

While we must never forget the human lives that are being snuffed out every day as a result of this invasion, Cherepanov's tragedy is just another reminder of the many, many other ways in which the war is taking its toll on the innocent civilians of Ukraine. Cherepanov thanked well-wishers on Facebook, confirming that for the time being he plans to launch a new web hosting service platform.