He Unesco committee decided this Thursday to register the ancient Greek city of the Tauric Chersonesoson the Crimean peninsula occupied by Russiaduring its annual assembly held in the South Korean city of Busan.
He Unesco committee decided this Thursday to register the ancient Greek city of the Tauric Chersonesoson the Crimean peninsula occupied by Russiaduring its annual assembly held in the South Korean city of Busan.
The inclusion of the only World Heritage site on the occupied Crimean peninsula by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee “confirms” the “magnitude and systematic nature of the changes taking place on the property under temporary occupation,” the Ukrainian delegation said following the decision.
The archaeological site of Chersonesos was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2013, a year before the annexation of the peninsula by the Kremlin, and the report now adopted by UNESCO highlights the excavation since then of more than 12 million archaeological objects and the transfer to Russian institutions without authorization from Ukraine.
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“The magnitude, intensity and cumulative nature of the reported interventions raise serious concerns,” indicates the UNESCO report.
More than four years after the start of the Russian invasion, in February 2022, the Ukrainian delegation denounced that Russia’s destruction of the ruins of the ancient Greek city is not an isolated incident.
“It reflects a coherent policy” of Moscow “aimed at integrating the cultural heritage of the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea,” they noted.
kyiv has previously denounced that the Kremlin is carrying out ‘cultural cleansing’ to erase the existence of a different cultural identity.
File photo of a man visiting the ruins of the old city of Chersonesos in Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine. Photo: EFE/Sergei Ilnitsky
The gratitude of the Ukrainian delegation was immediately followed by the protest of the Russian representatives, who described the inclusion of Chersonesos on the list of heritage in danger as “a new example of the politicization” of the UN Organization for Education, Science and Culture.
The threats to the ancient Roman city are “the constant terrorist attacks by the Ukrainian regime,” the delegation added.
The ancient Tauric city of Chersonesos was founded by Dorian Greeks in the 5th century BC. C., and includes, according to Unesco, six sites with urban remains and agricultural lands divided into hundreds of choras, rectangular plots of equal size that housed vineyards.
Chersonesos is thus added to other Ukrainian monuments that are already on the list of world heritage sites in danger due to threats arising from the Russian invasion, such as the Saint Sophia Cathedral in kyiv, the complex of related monastic buildings and the kyiv-Petchersk Cave Monastery, and the historic center of Lviv.
