UNESCO recommends placing Kyiv, Lviv on endangered heritage list

PARIS — Kyiv's Saint Sophia Cathedral and the historical center of western Ukrainian city Lviv should join UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites in danger due to the Russian invasion, a senior official at the UN body said Tuesday.

"These sites are threatened with destruction. There have been attacks on the buffer zones around these sites and we don't know what will happen in the future," the head of the World Heritage program Lazare Eloundou told AFP in Paris.

The World Heritage Committee, set to meet from September 10-25 in Riyadh, will "likely" make the decision "based on experts' opinion" that the sites are "demonstrably in danger," Eloundou added.

The center of Ukrainian port city Odesa is already on the list of endangered World Heritage sites, and several of its buildings were destroyed in late July in what UNESCO described at the time as a "brazen" attack.

Another historic building was bombed in Lviv in early July, with the UN body saying it was the first strike on an area protected by the World Heritage Convention and the first "violation" by Russia of the text since its invasion.

UNESCO has tallied damage to 270 Ukrainian cultural sites since Moscow's tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Along with Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv's historic center is "one of the major monuments representing the architectural and the monumental art of the early 11th century," UNESCO says on its website.

They have been on the World Heritage list since 1990, while Lviv's medieval center was added in 1996. — Agence France-Presse