PARIS (Reuters) – The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO said on Wednesday that it had designated the historic centre of Odesa, a strategic port city on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, a World Heritage in Danger site.
It is hoped the status, awarded by a UNESCO panel meeting in Paris, will help protect Odesa’s cultural heritage which has been under threat since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and enable access to financial and technical international aid.
Odesa has been bombed several times by Russia since its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
In July 2022, part of the large glass roof and windows of Odesa’s Museum of Fine Arts, inaugurated in 1899, were destroyed.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta/Richard Lough)
