MOSCOW — Security concerns and financial difficulties have forced the cancellation of Kiev’s second biennale of contemporary art, Art ARSENALE, which was supposed to be held later this year.

According to a statement posted on the website of Mystetskyi Arsenal, a museum that serves as the biennale venue, “due to the fact that the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine does not stop” it is “absolutely impossible” to hold the biennale.

“We were hoping that the military confrontation would end,” Nataliia Zabolotna, the general director of Mystetskyi Arsenal and founder and commissioner of the biennale said by telephone from Kiev. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of violating a peace agreement that was reached last month.

The biennale, which was originally scheduled for last year, was postponed in February 2014 as tensions mounted in Kiev that led later that month to violent clashes and the toppling of Viktor F. Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine who ended up fleeing to Russia. The Austrians Georg Schöllhammer and Hedwig Saxenhuber were to be the curators.

The art scene has been hit hard by the conflict in Ukraine. Last June, Russian separatists seized the offices of Izolyatsia, a contemporary foundation that had been based in a Soviet-era factory in Donetsk. The foundation is now continuing its work in Kiev. On the other side of the conflict, Ukraine’s culture minister, Vyacheslav Kirilenko, said on television earlier this year that “culture and humanitarian policy” should “serve the tasks of the front.”