The Orthodox Cathedral was badly damaged in the recent attack on Odessa (Oleksandr GIMANOV)
Two people were killed and a historic Orthodox cathedral was badly damaged in Russia’s latest attack on Odessa on Sunday. The Ukrainian leader swore revenge.
The attack came as President Vladimir Putin met his Belarusian counterpart for talks in Russia and claimed that Kiev’s counter-offensive had “failed”.
Russia has been pressuring the Ukrainian port city of Odessa since pulling out of the Black Sea grain deal last week.
Locals watched in disbelief as the Transfiguration Cathedral – originally built in 1794 under Imperial Russian rule – was struck.
The largest orthodox church in Odessa is located in the UNESCO-protected historic city center.
UNESCO condemned the “brazen” attack, which hit several sites in the World Heritage area and represented an “escalation of violence against Ukraine’s cultural heritage,” according to UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay.
Clergy rescued icons from the rubble of the badly damaged sanctuary, which was demolished under Stalin in 1936 and rebuilt in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The culture ministry said it had so far identified damage to 29 monuments of significant cultural heritage.
The Ukrainian government condemned the cathedral strike as a “war crime” and said it was “destroyed twice: by Stalin and by Putin”.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced retaliation: “You will definitely feel it,” he said.
“We cannot allow people around the world to get used to terrorist attacks,” Zelenskyy added in his evening address late Sunday.
“The targets of all these rockets are not just cities, villages or people. Their goal is humanity and the foundations of our entire European culture.”
– Icons pulled from the rubble –
Pictures showed smashed mosaics on the cathedral floor as workers cleared the rubble. The exterior of the building appeared intact.
“The cathedral was hit directly,” said Father Myroslav, the deputy rector, adding that three altars were destroyed.
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Icons were dug up from under the rubble and the shrine was “very badly damaged inside” with “only the bell tower intact,” he added.
Clerics said a security guard and a priest preparing for the morning liturgy were inside during the attack but both survived.
Russia blamed Ukraine’s air defenses for the damage to the cathedral. She said she hit all intended targets in the Odessa attack and claimed the sites were being used to prepare for “terrorist attacks” against Russia.
But locals said Russia hit residential areas.
“We have ordinary apartment buildings here that people live in,” Tetiana, a woman who owns a beauty salon nearby, told AFP.
“There are no military installations here. Just basic beauty salons, a naval agency, a dog groomer. There is nothing military here at all.”
Russia launched a wave of attacks on the Black Sea port this week after severing a deal between Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul and the United Nations that allowed cargo ships to safely pass through.
Ukraine has vowed to find a way to continue exports from the ports and said the repeated Russian attacks on Odessa this week on Sunday were an attempt to “deter and neutralize international efforts to restore the functioning of the ‘grain corridor’.”
– Putin meets Lukashenko –
As Odessa cleared the debris from Russian attacks, Putin received his closest ally, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, in his hometown of Saint Petersburg – their first meeting since Minsk helped end an uprising by Russia’s Wagner Troupe.
Both leaders opposed the Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake lands captured by Russia.
“There is no counter-offensive,” Lukashenko said at the meeting, before being interrupted by Putin: “There is one, but it failed.”
The Belarusian ruler is now hosting Wagner fighters on his territory after brokering a deal that convinced its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to end the march on Moscow and exile himself to Belarus.
“We control what happens (with Wagner),” he said, thanking Putin for his promise to defend Belarus should it be attacked.
Wagner’s presence in Belarus has rocked EU and NATO member Poland, which has strengthened its border.
On Sunday, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said a new engineer battalion was being set up in the north-east of the country.
Polish, US, British, Romanian and Croatian soldiers were training “shoulder to shoulder,” he said during a visit to the northeastern city of Augustow.
The comments came two days after Putin said western Poland was a “gift” from Stalin at the end of World War II, as victorious allies decided the contours of post-war Europe. Because of these remarks, Warsaw summoned the Russian ambassador.
Both Putin and Lukashenko also accused Warsaw of territorial ambitions towards Ukraine and Belarus.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was quick to respond on Twitter.
“Putin’s attempts to drive a wedge between Kiev and Warsaw are as futile as his failed invasion of Ukraine,” he wrote.
“Unlike Russia, Poland and Ukraine have learned from history and will always stand united against Russian imperialism and disregard for international law.”
Fighting continued in Ukraine on Sunday, with Russia firing 17 cruise missiles and two ballistic missiles, according to the Ukrainian army.
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