Information about the destruction of the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral appeared in the Wikipedia article about the church shortly after it became clear which buildings were damaged by the Russian attack on Odesa during the night of July 23. Ukrainian Wikipedia administrator Anatoliy Lutsyuk explains that the editing history of Wikipedia uses UTC time, which currently is three hours ahead of Kyiv time.
Several Kremlin media outlets are spreading conspiracy theories claiming that Ukraine planned a strike on the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral in advance. This is allegedly confirmed by the fact that information about the destruction of the church appeared in the online Wikipedia article about the cathedral a few hours before the actual Russian missile attacks on the Ukrainian port city Odesa.
“Ukrainian nationalists knew about the destruction of the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral even before the missile attack of the RF Armed Forces,” writes Pravda.ru, using a Wikipedia screenshot as proof of their allegation. That screenshot has since been removed from this fake story.
Each Wikipedia article contains all the edits and changes that have been made, the reader can see those, as well as see who made the edits and from which IP address. The Ukrainian language Wikipedia article about the Odesa Transfiguration cathedral shows that the very first edit was made on July 22 at 22:59. At the same time, the Russian attack on Odesa, which resulted in significant damage to the Transfiguration Cathedral as well as several other historic buildings in the city, took place on the night of 23 July. Approximately at 00:38 on July 23, an air raid alarm sounded in the Odesa region, and by 1:00 AM the first information about explosions in the city appeared online.
StopFake reached out to Ukrainian language Wikipedia administrator Anatoliy Lutsyuk, to explain why the changes to the article about the cathedral appeared before the attack. As it turned out, there is no conspiracy hiding behind the time of the edits. This is explained by the fact that Wikipedia editing history goes by Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC time, the primary standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. The difference between UTC time and Kyiv time is +3 hours in summer. This explanation can be found on Wikipedia in the section discussing article changes and edits. Thus, the first edits appeared from 01:59 on July 23, when it became known which buildings in Odessa were damaged as a result of the attack by the Russian army.
As previously reported, on the night of July 22-23, Russian troops carried out another massive attack on Odesa and the surrounding region. As a result of the attack, one person died and 22 people were injured, including 4 children. Ukraine’s Southern Command reported that during a missile attack, the Russian army hit the Odesa region with five types of missiles: Caliber, Onyx, X-22 and Iskander-K, as well as ballistic Iskander-M. About 40 buildings were damaged during the attack, the Odesa City Council reported, including the Transfiguration Cathedral.
Earlier, StopFake debunked Russian fakes claiming that Ukrainian military equipment instead of grain was stored in Odesa port hangars destroyed by Russian strikes.
