Russian missile strikes on the port city of Odesa killed at least one person, injured 19 more and damaged important buildings in the historic city center, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ukrainian officials said Sunday.
The Spaso-Preobrazhenskyi Cathedral, or Transfiguration Cathedral, suffered “significant damage,” officials said on the city's Telegram channel.
Orthodox shrines in the early 19th century cathedral were also damaged, they said, adding that “the Kasperovska Icon of the Mother of God, who is the patroness of Odesa, was retrieved from under the rubble.”
Ukrainian media also reported that the Palace of the Tolstoy family, commonly known as the House of Scientists, was also damaged. NBC News could not verify the reports. UNESCO designated Odesa’s historic center as an endangered World Heritage Site this year.
Strikes also destroyed six residential buildings, including several apartment blocks, Odesa Gov. Oleh Kiper said on his Telegram channel.
He said that one person had been killed and that 19 other people had been injured, three of them children. A 17-year-old boy was “in a serious condition in intensive care,” he said.
Condemning the attack on his Telegram channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there would “definitely be a retaliation.”
“Missiles against peaceful cities, against residential buildings, a cathedral ... there can be no excuse for Russian evil,” he said.
A video the Odesa City Council posted later on social media shows Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov walking through the significantly damaged cathedral, which is strewn with rubble and debris.
The cathedral, which belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, was the first church in the city, which was founded in 1794. The church has been accused of having links to Russia, although it has insisted that it is loyal to Ukraine, and it has denounced the Russian invasion from the start and declared its independence from Moscow.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Sunday that its forces had attacked sites in Odesa “where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation were being prepared,” according to The Associated Press. It said that the strikes were carried out with sea- and air-based long-range high-precision weapons and that “foreign mercenaries” were at the targeted sites.
In a later statement, the ministry denied that its attacks had struck the Transfiguration Cathedral, claiming the destruction was most likely due to “the fall of a Ukrainian anti-aircraft guided missile,” according to the AP.
Russia has been launching persistent attacks on Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain, since Monday, when President Vladimir Putin canceled a landmark grain deal that allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where the conflict has threatened hunger levels and caused a surge in food prices.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was suspending the initiative until its demands to get its own agricultural shipments to the world were met, even though wheat shipments from the country hit all-time highs this year after a large harvest, according to U.S. Agriculture Department estimates.
Ukraine, which is known as the breadbasket of the world, is a major global supplier of wheat, barley and vegetable oil, alongside Russia.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's Security and Defense Council, accused Putin on Sunday of trying to make Russia into a “grain superempire.”
“The main goal of the Russian missile attacks on Odesa and the region is an attempt to completely isolate Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea,” he said on Facebook. “According to the Kremlin plan, artificial conditions for threats of famine should be created primarily for African countries, and an increase in the level of migration dangers for Europe.”