— These places are threatened with desolation. There have been attacks on the buffer zones around these places and we don’t know what will happen in the future, he says.
The World Heritage Committee is “likely” to make a decision on the matter when it meets later in September, according to Eloundou who says the sites are “provably at risk”.
The center of the Ukrainian port city of Odessa is already on the list of endangered world heritage sites. Several of the city’s buildings were destroyed late in July in a Russian attack described by Unesco as “shameless”.
Earlier in July, another historical building was met in Lviv. According to Unesco, it was the first time Russia carried out an attack on an area protected by the World Heritage Convention.
Unesco has recorded around 270 damages to culturally significant sites around Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale war of invasion on February 24, 2022.