Ukraine's government will ask the UN's cultural watchdog to add the historic port city of Odessa to its World Heritage List of protected sites as Moscow's forces approach the city, officials said Tuesday.
Russian forces are within several dozen kilometres (miles) of Odessa, which blossomed after empress Catherine the Great decreed in the late 18th century that it would be Russia's modern gateway to the Black Sea.
Czar Alexander soon named as governor France's Duc de Richelieu, who oversaw its stately construction and whose statue still stands atop the monumental Potemkin stairs.
"Odessa is in danger right now," Ukraine's Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko told AFP after meeting with UNESCO director Audrey Azoulay in Paris.
Analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon target Odessa to completely block Ukraine's Black Sea access, potentially with heavy bombardments like those that razed the port of Mariupol.
Last month the city was struck by missiles just hours after Russia agreed to allow a shipment of Ukrainian grain exports from the port.
"On July 24 2022, part of the large glass roof and windows of Odessa's Museum of Fine Arts, inaugurated in 1899, were destroyed," the agency said in a statement.
It said UNESCO experts already on the ground would provide technical assistance so that Odessa could be urgently added to both the World Heritage List and the list of heritage sites in danger.
"If you close your eyes and imagine some parts of Paris, Nice or Marseille, you can imagine Odessa too because it's on the sea coast and the architects were mainly from France and Italy," Tkachenko said.
"It is important due to the war to include the Odessa city centre on the World Heritage List; probably it can help to prevent further bomb shelling," he said.
UNESCO said it would also ask its World Heritage Committee to place the Saint-Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the historic centre of Lviv -- already recognised as protected sites -- on the endangered list.
Adding a landmark site or traditional activity to the UNESCO list aims to mobilise attention to ensure it is preserved against threats to its existence.
The agency says 175 Ukrainian cultural and historic sites have been damaged since Russia launched its invasion in February, including monuments, museums, libraries and religious buildings.
Many were hit despite being marked with the distinctive "blue shield" indicating they are protected under the 1954 Hague convention on culture in armed conflicts, of which both Russia and Ukraine are signatories.
UNESCO said it had already mobilised nearly $7 million for Ukraine, and would provide additional funding to repair museum damage sustained in the war and more equipment for protecting vulnerable works.
It will also provide assistance for "digitisation of at least 1,000 works of art in Odessa as well as the documentary collection of the Odessa State Archives," it said.
In July, Ukraine secured the placement of its beetroot soup known as borshch on its list of intangible cultural heritage, a move denounced by Moscow as "xenophobia."
