PARIS: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused around $3.5 billion worth of damage to the country’s heritage and cultural sites, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday.
Culture, tourism, and entertainment have lost a combined $19 billion in revenues since the Russian invasion in February 2022, the UN’s educational, scientific and cultural organisation UNESCO said.
Last year, the Paris-based organisation estimated the damage at nearly $2.6 billion.
According to UNESCO, which used satellite images to assess the damage, some 5,000 sites have been destroyed, including more than 340 sites such as museums, monuments, libraries and religious venues.
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That figure stood at 248 sites as of April last year.
Two UNESCO World Heritage sites – the medieval centre of the western city of Lviv and Odesa in the south – were among those hit hard by Russian strikes.
Chiara Dezzi Bardeschi, the organisation’s representative in Ukraine, singled out Odesa’s Transfiguration Cathedral, a “symbol for the whole community”, which was badly damaged by a Russian strike in July last year.
Founded in 1794 and destroyed by the Soviets in 1936, the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa was rebuilt in the 2000s with donations.
It was consecrated in 2010 by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill.
The cathedral has “a religious and spiritual value” for the city but can no longer be used by the community, Bardeschi said.
Seven cultural sites and one natural site in Ukraine are on UNESCO’s World Heritage List including the historic centre of Odesa.
Sixteen other sites are on UNESCO’s tentative World Heritage sites list, awaiting a formal application by the government in Kyiv to be given World Heritage status.
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