Global Courant
Russia hit the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odessa again on Sunday, sustaining a barrage of attacks that have damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine over the past week. At least one person was killed and 22 others injured in the early hours attack, officials said.
Regional governor Oleh Kiper said four children were injured in the explosions, which severely damaged 25 landmarks in the city. They include the historic Transfiguration Cathedral.
After the fires were extinguished, volunteers in the cathedral donned helmets, shovels and brooms to begin clearing debris, combing through to salvage any artifacts—under the watchful gaze of the saints whose paintings remained intact. Local officials said the icon of the city’s patroness had been pulled out from under the rubble.
“The destruction is massive, half the cathedral is now homeless,” Archdeacon Andrii Palchuk said. Cathedral workers removed documents and valuables from the building, which had a flooded floor used by firefighters to put out the fire.
Palchuk said the damage was caused by a direct hit from a Russian missile that penetrated the building to the basement. Two people inside at the time of the strike were injured.
“But with God’s help we will restore it,” he said, bursting into tears.
‘This is our Ukrainian heritage’
One of the women who came to help clean up said she loved it “for its tranquility and grace”.
“When you enter this church, you feel like you are out of the world,” said Liudmyla, who only gave her first name. “I feel that in order to protect apartments, God took on this pain, this explosion.”
Anna Fetchenko, who came to Odessa for a volunteer meeting, also helped clear the rubble.
People clear rubble and debris from the Transfiguration Cathedral after it was heavily damaged by Russian missile strikes in Odessa on Sunday. (Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press)
“I wanted to go to the coast, but last night was so frightening that I cried for the first time in 2023,” she said. “This is our Ukrainian heritage, and now it has been taken from us.”
Later on Sunday, Palchuk urged people to gather in front of the destroyed part of the cathedral for an outdoor service and pray before a sacred icon that “miraculously survived.”
“We will pray that it protects us from the Russians,” he said.
Ukrainian Orthodox Church accused of ties to Russia
The cathedral is owned by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is accused of ties to Russia. The Church has maintained its loyalty to Ukraine, denounced the Russian invasion from the start, and even declared independence from Moscow.
But Ukrainian security services have claimed that some in the Ukrainian church have maintained close ties to Moscow. They raided numerous Church holy sites and later posted pictures of rubles, Russian passports and pamphlets with messages from the Moscow Patriarch proving that some Church officials have been loyal to Russia.
The historic center of Odessa was declared an endangered World Heritage Site by UNESCO earlier this year, despite Russian opposition.
Kiper, the regional governor, noted that six residential buildings, including apartment buildings, were destroyed by the strikes. In one such case in central Odessa, some people were trapped in their apartments due to the damage caused by the attack, with debris in the street partially blocking the road and damage to power lines.
Svitlana Molcharova, 85, was rescued by rescuers. But after receiving medical attention, she refused to leave her devastated apartment.
“I’m staying here,” she told the aid worker who advised her to leave.
“I woke up when the ceiling started to fall on me. I ran into the hallway,” says Ivan Kovalenko, 19, another resident of the building. He came to Odessa after fleeing the city of Mykolaiv in search of a safer place to live when his home was destroyed.
“That’s how I lost my house in Mykolaiv, and here I lost my rented apartment.” In his home, the ceiling partially collapsed, the balcony came out the side of the building, and all the windows were blown out.
Russia launched 19 missiles
The Ukrainian Air Force reported on the Telegram messaging app that Russia had launched 19 missiles in the Odessa region, including five high-precision winged Onyx missiles and four sea-to-coast Kalibr cruise missiles.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Sunday that Russian forces had attacked locations in Odessa “where terrorist attacks against the Russian Federation were being prepared”.
In a later statement, the ministry denied that its attacks had hit the Transfiguration Cathedral, claiming that the cathedral’s destruction was likely due to “the fall of a Ukrainian anti-aircraft guided missile”.
Russia has been waging persistent attacks on Odessa, a major grain export hub, since Moscow canceled a historic grain deal on Monday amid Kiev’s struggles to retake the occupied territories.
Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew Russia from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a wartime agreement that allowed Ukraine’s exports to reach many countries threatened with hunger.
Earlier Russian attacks this week paralyzed significant parts of export facilities in Odessa and nearby Chornomorsk, destroying 60,000 tons of grain, according to Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry.
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Putin vowed to retaliate against Kiev for Monday’s attack on the crucial Kerch bridge that connects Russia to the Crimean peninsula, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014.
In other developments:
Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met in St Petersburg on Sunday, two days after Moscow warned Poland that any aggression against its neighbor and ally Belarus would be regarded as an attack on Russia. Putin announced at the start of the meeting that talks would also take place on Monday and stated that Kiev’s counter-offensive had failed. Lukashenko said the troops of the Wagner group, which launched joint exercises with the Belarusian army on Thursday, came close to a month after their short-lived uprising against Moscow. , wanted to go west “on an excursion to Warsaw, to Rzeszow” in Poland, but that Belarus would not allow them to move. Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov reported on Sunday morning that two people were killed in Russian attacks on the northeastern province on Saturday, when Russia attacked populated areas of Kharkov, Chuhuiv, Kupiansk and Izium districts. Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Sunday that four residents of the eastern region were killed and 11 injured in attacks the previous day.
