On 24 April 2025, the Moscow Kremlin Museums held a ceremony to open the exhibition "1941-1945. Moscow. Kremlin. Rescued Treasures". The project brought together over 50 artefacts, many of which had been evacuated to Sverdlovsk during the Great Patriotic War before being returned to the Armoury Chamber in 1945. These included ceremonial arms, decorative and applied arts items, glass and porcelain vessels, and various awards. Some of these relics are being presented to the public for the first time.

Those in attendance at the opening ceremony included the Special Representative of the Russian President for Environmental Protection, Ecology and Transport, and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, Sergei Ivanov; the General Director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, Elena Gagarina; and the curator of the exhibition and Head of the Division of Manuscript, Printed and Graphic Collections, Elena Isaeva.

"The theme of our display is the evacuation of the Moscow Kremlin Museums' collection, which was conducted with great success by Nikolay Zakharov, director of the Armoury Chamber, and Nikolay Spiridonov, commandant of the Kremlin," said Elena Gagarina.

"The great holiday is coming up – the 80th anniversary of Victory Day. It is significant that the first exhibition of its kind, devoted to the evacuation of the Kremlin’s valuables and the preservation of the Kremlin itself, is opening here in the Kremlin today. I would like to express my gratitude to our ancestors who worked at the Moscow Kremlin Museums and in the Kremlin at that time. This is all our history, and we must not forget it. I would like to thank the organisers of the exhibition for putting it together and unveiling it, because our great history needs to be known", said Sergei Ivanov.

Elena Isaeva emphasised: 'We dedicate this exhibition to the warriors who defended the Moscow Kremlin against the fascist army's shells, and to the non-combatants – the staff of the Moscow Kremlin Museums and the Armoury Chamber – who, with great heroism, gathered all the rarities, evacuated them, and preserved them. The Armoury Chamber remained in evacuation for three years and seven months, and none of the items sustained significant damage. A new exhibition in the Armoury Chamber opened at short notice after its arrival."

At the exhibition's media preview, Elena Milovzorova, the Director of the Department of Publishing and Special Programmes at the Moscow Kremlin Museums, also said: 'Almost all of the exhibits that we see today in the Armoury Chamber were in the evacuation during the war years, so our small exhibition project forms part of the relics presented in these halls. They are all vivid witnesses to history."

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