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 from Unesco.
“These sites are threatened with destruction. There have been attacks in the buffer zones of these sites and we do not know what will happen in the future”, explained the director of World Heritage Lazare Eloundou, interviewed by AFP in Paris, headquarters of this agency. UN. The World Heritage Committee, which will meet from September 10 to 25 in Riyadh, will “probably” take this decision “on the basis of the advice of experts”, for whom the two sites are in a situation of “proven danger”. “, he continued. The sites of Kiev and Lviv will join on the list of world heritage in danger the city center of Odessa, several buildings of which had been destroyed at the end of July by “brutal Russian strikes”, denounced as such by Unesco. In early July, a “historic building” was also bombed in Lviv in what was then, according to Unesco, the “first” attack since the start 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.
Unesco records 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 beginning of the 11th century” in Ukraine, according to Unesco. It has been listed as a World Heritage Site since 1990, as is the lavra (Orthodox monastery, Ed) of Kiev-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.
