Paris:
The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO said on Tuesday it supported a bid by Ukraine to place its port city of Odessa on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
After Ukraine’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko met with UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay at the agency’s headquarters in Paris, UNESCO said it had mobilized experts to support Ukraine so that the nomination can be urgently examined by the member states of the World Heritage Committee.
UNESCO said it also wants to add Odessa to the list of world heritage sites in danger, as well as the world heritage sites of Kiev and Lviv, which are also under threat.
The Black Sea port city of Odessa is just tens of kilometers from the front line and has already been hit by artillery fire, UNESCO said. Last month, part of the large glass roof and windows of the Museum of Fine Arts in Odessa, inaugurated in 1899, was destroyed.
UNESCO has been funding repairs to the museum and the Odessa Museum of Modern Art since the beginning of the war, and is funding the recruitment of additional personnel dedicated to protecting collections. It will also aid in the digitization of artworks and provide protective equipment.
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