Nine people have been killed in a new wave of Russian airstrikes against Ukraine on Sunday night: four people were killed in the capital, Kyiv, and five rescue workers died trying to put out a fire in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv.
The attacks in Kyiv caused significant damage to the Dormition Cathedral, the main building of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (Monastery of the Caves), one of the major religious landmarks in the country and Orthodox Christianity. The church, from the 11th Century, protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, reportedly suffered a direct hit. Ukraine President President Volodymyr Zelensky called "one of the biggest Russian crimes against Christian culture", and this is not the first time the cathedral, which was almost entirely rebuilt after World War II, has been hit in the ongoing war.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has now lasted longer than World War I and has worsened in the last few months, with Putin intensifying attacks as Russia loses some of its captured territories.
This may lead to a phase in the war where historical sites are targeted to damage the enemy's morale, according to El País. The most recent strikes Russian also hit the Arsenal Museum and a historic Ukrainian film studio, destroying a collection of clothing dating centuries old, while last week Ukraine attacked Crimea and hit a museum dedicated to the defence of Sevastopol in the Crimean War (1854-1855), damaging Franz Roubaud's enormous painting.