The Russian attack on the old town of the Ukrainian port city of Odessa has sparked outrage in the West. The blasts hit the city in southern Ukraine on Saturday night, killing two people, injuring more than twenty others and destroying or damaging buildings near the famous staircase in the historic center. The old town was only included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in an urgent application in January. were on the internet Images of the destroyed Transfiguration Cathedral to see, a sacred building erected in 1794, which was destroyed by the Soviet Union in 1936 and rebuilt in 2003. The footage shows the domes torn open, walls collapsed, the altar destroyed and icons recovered from the rubble. The Cathedral is the largest orthodox church in the city. She belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which recently seceded from the Moscow Patriarchate. Russian Patriarch Kirill visited the church in 2010.
President Zelensky wants to ‘defeat Russian evil’ after attack
According to UNESCO, the Archaeological Museum, the Naval Museum and the Literature Museum in Odessa were also affected. The organization condemned the attacks and warned of a growing threat to Ukrainian culture. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in the morning that Ukraine would “retaliate against Russian terrorists”: “We must defeat Russian evil.” The German Minister of State for Culture, Claudia Roth, was also outraged by the attack. Russia’s war applies to all areas of Ukrainian society and democracy, especially its independent culture.
There had recently been conflicts about the role of Ukrainian culture in times of war. Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko resigned just a few days ago because, among other things, he had planned ambitious, expensive or inappropriate cultural projects such as TV comedies. In times of war, drones are more important than museums, Zelensky noted. On the other hand, Ukrainians also see Russia’s war as an attempt to erase their culture, language and distinct identity.