Defence Minister: Russia to deliver Syria’s Palmyra restorations files to UNESCO soon

Russian Defence Minister and President of the Russian Geographical Society (RGO), Sergey Shoigu announced that his country would hand over files related to the restoration of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) including a three-dimensional model within a month or two.

Speaking to Russia’s TASS news agency, Shoigu said when Russia called to restore the ancient Syrian city, various movements; neither scientific nor cultural or geographical started meddling, however, when Russia announced that it was taking steps to restore the Syrian city, none of those movements offered to help.

According to the Russian minister, the Russian Geographical Society has uncovered photos of Palmyra taken in 1872 by the first Russian travellers who arrived there.

“Now we are putting together an album in which we want to show what was there and what has been done. This endeavour is needed to understand what to do next. For this, we are creating a 3D model of Palmyra. I believe soon; maybe in a month or two, we will send these files to UNESCO so that they could assess the overall volume of restoration works” Shoigu said.

UNESCO World Heritage Committee has earlier called on the need to raise funds to restore the Syrian world-renowned cultural site after militants who controlled the city destroyed some monuments there.

UNESCO lists Palmyra on its list of world cultural heritage sites.

READ: Russian defence minister meets Bashar al-Assad in Syria