2023-09-05 18:26:45
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These Ukrainian sites “are threatened with destruction”, warns the director of World Heritage. The decision to list them as World Heritage in Danger could be taken in September, during a meeting in Riyadh.
France Télévisions – Culture editorial staff
Published on 05/09/2023 18:26
Reading time: 1 min.
Saint Sophia Cathedral in kyiv (Ukraine), in March 2008. (JJ. BARRELLE / PHOTONONSTOP / AFP)
Saint Sophia’s Cathedral and monastic buildings in Kiev are due to join the list of world heritage in danger in mid-September, as is the historic center of Lviv (West), due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a-t -we learned Tuesday, September 5 from Unesco. “These sites are threatened with destruction. There have been attacks in the buffer zones of these sites and it is unclear what will happen in the future“, explains the director of World Heritage Lazare Eloundou.
Both sites are “in proven jeopardy”
The World Heritage Committee, which will meet from September 10 to 25 in Riyadh, will take “probably” this decision “based on expert opinion“, for which the two sites are in a situation of “proven peril“, he continued. The sites of kyiv and Lviv will join the list of World Heritage in Danger to the city center of Odessa, several buildings of which had been destroyed at the end of July by “russian brutal strikes“, denounced as such by Unesco.
In early July, a “historic building“had also been bombed in Lviv in what was then, according to Unesco, the “first“attack since the beginning of the conflict in an area protected by the World Heritage Convention, and therefore the first”violation” of this text of which Russia is a signatory, according to the UN agency.
270 Ukrainian sites damaged since the Russian invasion
Unesco lists damage to 270 Ukrainian cultural sites since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. Saint Sophia’s Cathedral, located in the historic center of Kiev, is “one of the main monuments representing the architecture and monumental art of the early 11th century“in Ukraine, according to Unesco. It has been listed as a World Heritage Site since 1990, just like the lavra (Orthodox monastery, editor’s note) of kyiv-Pechersk,”an architectural ensemble of monastic buildings” founded at the same time and located on a plateau overlooking the Dnieper River. The historic center of Lviv, a city founded in the Middle Ages, was listed in 1996 as a World Heritage Site.
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