KYIV: Russian strikes overnight in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa left eight people wounded and damaged a historic art museum, Ukrainian officials said on Monday, in the latest barrage of drones and missiles.
Three more were injured in a Russian shelling attack on the southern city of Kherson on Monday, as Kyiv doubled down on its warnings that Russia was planning to pummel Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of the winter.
Images released by officials from inside the Odesa Fine Arts Museum showed art ripped from the walls of the 19th-century building and windows blown out by the aerial bombardment.
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Emine Dzheppar said Kyiv was “deeply outraged” by the attack and urged the United Nations’ Paris-based heritage agency UNESCO to condemn the strike.
UNESCO said it “strongly condemns the attack” and that “cultural sites must be protected”.
Kyiv said earlier that Russian forces had launched four missiles and nearly two dozen attack drones from occupied regions of the country in the south overnight.
Ukraine’s military downed 15 drones and one of the missiles, it said in a statement.
The gallery said on social media the attack had occurred on the museum’s 124th birthday and the facility would be closed until further notice.
The governor of the Odesa region, Oleg Kiper, said most of the collection had already been removed during the war.
“Canvases and paintings from the current exhibition were not damaged,” he added on social media.
A woman who lived in a nearby building said she and her family were away during the strike but their home had been damaged.
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