ODESA, Ukraine — Rus­sia struck the Ukrain­ian Black Sea city of Odesa on Sunday, keep­ing up a bar­rage of attacks that has dam­aged crit­ical port infra­struc­ture in south­ern Ukraine in the last week. At least one per­son was killed and 22 oth­ers wounded in the early morn­ing attack, offi­cials said.

Four chil­dren were among those wounded in the blasts, which severely dam­aged 25 land­marks across the city, includ­ing the his­toric Trans­fig­ur­a­tion Cathed­ral.

Rus­sia has been launch­ing repeated attacks on Odesa, a key hub for export­ing grain, since Moscow can­celed a land­mark grain deal July 17 amid Kyiv’s grind­ing efforts to retake its occu­pied ter­rit­or­ies.

After the fires were put out at the Ortho­dox cathed­ral, volun­teers donned hard hats, shovels and brooms to begin remov­ing rubble and try to sal­vage any arti­facts — under the watch­ful gaze of the saints whose paint­ings remained intact. Local offi­cials said the icon of the pat­ron­ess of the city was retrieved from under the rubble.

“The destruc­tion is enorm­ous. Half of the cathed­ral is now roof­less,” said Arch­deacon Andrii Pal­chuk, as work­ers brought doc­u­ments and valu­ables out of the build­ing, its floor inund­ated with water used by fire­fight­ers to extin­guish the blaze.

Pal­chuk said the dam­age was caused by a dir­ect hit from a Rus­sian mis­sile that pen­et­rated the build­ing down to the base­ment. Two people inside were wounded.

“But with God’s help, we will restore it,” he said, burst­ing into tears.

A woman who came to help with the cleanup said she loved the cathed­ral “for its tran­quil­ity and grace.”

“When you enter this church, you feel like you’re bey­ond the world,” said Liudmyla, who gave only her first name. “I have a feel­ing that God, to pro­tect apart­ments, took this pain, this explo­sion upon him­self.”

Anna Fetchenko, who came to Odesa for a volun­teer meet­ing, also pitched in to clear the debris. “I wanted to go to the sea­side, but last night was so fright­en­ing that I cried for the first time in 2023,” she said.

“This is our Ukrain­ian her­it­age, and now it’s taken away from us.”

Later Sunday, Pal­chuk urged people to gather in front of the des­troyed part of the cathed­ral for an out­door ser­vice and to pray in front of a sac­red icon that “mira­cu­lously sur­vived.”

“We will pray that it pro­tects us from the Rus­si­ans,” he said.

The cathed­ral belongs to the Ukrain­ian Ortho­dox Church, which has been accused of links to Rus­sia. The church has insisted that it is loyal to Ukraine, has denounced the Rus­sian inva­sion from the start and even declared its inde­pend­ence from Moscow.

The cathed­ral belongs to the Ukrain­ian Ortho­dox Church, which has been accused of links to Rus­sia. The church has insisted that it is loyal to Ukraine, has denounced the Rus­sian inva­sion from the start and even declared its inde­pend­ence from Moscow.

But Ukrain­ian secur­ity agen­cies have claimed that some in the Ukrain­ian church main­tain close ties with Moscow. They’ve raided numer­ous church holy sites and pos­ted pho­tos of rubles, Rus­sian pass­ports and leaf­lets with mes­sages from the Moscow pat­ri­arch as proof that some church offi­cials are loyal to Rus­sia.

The United Nations Edu­ca­tional, Sci­entific and Cul­tural Organ­iz­a­tion strongly con­demned the attacks on the cathed­ral and other her­it­age sites and said it would send a mis­sion in com­ing days to assess dam­age.

Odesa’s his­toric cen­ter was declared a UNESCO World Her­it­age site this year, and the agency said the Rus­sian attacks con­tra­dict Moscow’s pledge to take pre­cau­tions to spare such sites in Ukraine.

“This out­rageous destruc­tion marks an escal­a­tion of viol­ence against the cul­tural her­it­age of Ukraine. I strongly con­demn this attack against cul­ture, and I urge the Rus­sian Fed­er­a­tion to take mean­ing­ful action to com­ply with its oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tional law,” UNESCO Dir­ector-Gen­eral Audrey Azoulay said in a state­ment.

Regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said the strikes des­troyed six res­id­en­tial build­ings.

Some people were trapped in their apart­ments after the attacks, which left rubble strewn in the street and partly block­ing the road.

Svit­lana Mol­char­ova, 85, was res­cued by emer­gency work­ers. But after she received first aid, she refused to leave her des­troyed apart­ment. “I will stay here,” she said.

“I woke up when the ceil­ing star­ted to fall on me. I rushed into the cor­ridor,” said Ivan Kova­lenko, 19, a res­id­ent of the build­ing. “That’s how I lost my home in Mykolaiv, and here, I lost my ren­ted apart­ment.”

His unit revealed a par­tially col­lapsed ceil­ing and a bal­cony that came off the side of the build­ing. All the win­dows were blown out.

Ukraine’s air force repor­ted on the Tele­gram mes­saging app that Rus­sia had launched 19 mis­siles in the Odesa region, includ­ing five high-pre­ci­sion winged Onyx mis­siles and four seato-shore Kal­ibr cruise mis­siles. It said that Ukrain­ian air defenses shot down nine.

Rus­sia’s Defense Min­istry said Sunday that its forces attacked sites in Odesa “where ter­ror­ist acts against the Rus­sian Fed­er­a­tion were being pre­pared.”

The min­istry denied that its attacks struck the Trans­fig­ur­a­tion Cathed­ral, claim­ing the destruc­tion was prob­ably due to “the fall of a Ukrain­ian anti­air­craft guided mis­sile.”

NEW YORK — Elon Musk said Sunday that he plans to change the logo of Twit­ter to an “X” from the fam­ous blue bird, mark­ing what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media plat­form for $44 bil­lion last year.

In a series of posts on his Twit­ter account start­ing just after 12 a.m., Twit­ter’s owner said that he’s look­ing to make the change world­wide as soon as Monday.

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twit­ter brand and, gradu­ally, all the birds,” Musk wrote on his account.

The change isn’t sur­pris­ing given Musk’s long his­tory with the name “X,” says Allen Adam­son, cofounder of mar­ket­ing con­sultancy Meta­force. The bil­lion­aire Tesla CEO tweeted last Octo­ber that “buy­ing Twit­ter is an accel­er­ant to cre­at­ing X, the everything app.”

Musk’s rocket com­pany, Space Explor­a­tion Tech­no­lo­gies Corp., is com­monly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, Musk foun­ded a star­tup called X.com, an online fin­an­cial ser­vices com­pany now known as PayPal.

“Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the let­ter X,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

Hours later on Sunday, Linda Yac­carino, the long­time NBC Uni­ver­sal exec­ut­ive Musk appoin­ted as Twit­ter CEO in May, weighed in on the move.

“It’s an excep­tion­ally rare thing — in life or in busi­ness — that you get a second chance to make another big impres­sion,” she wrote on her Twit­ter account. “Twit­ter made one massive impres­sion and changed the way we com­mu­nic­ate. Now, X will go fur­ther, trans­form­ing the global town square.”

Yac­carino wrote on Twit­ter that X would be “the future state of unlim­ited inter­activ­ity — centered in audio, video, mes­saging, pay­ments/ bank­ing — cre­at­ing a global mar­ket­place for ideas, goods, ser­vices, and oppor­tun­it­ies.”

But the change on Twit­ter was

met with skep­ti­cism on the social media plat­form.

The change will be very con­fus­ing to a huge chunk of the Twit­ter’s audi­ence, which has been already sour­ing on the social plat­form given a slew of other major changes Musk has made, Adam­son said.

“They won’t get it,” he said. “It’s a fit­ting end to a phe­nom­enal unwind­ing of an iconic brand and busi­ness.”

Earlier this month, Musk put new curfews on his digital town square, a move that met with sharp cri­ti­cism it could drive away more advert­isers and under­mine its cul­tural influ­ence as a trend­set­ter.

The higher tweet-view­ing threshold is part of an $8-per-month sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that Musk rolled out earlier this year in an attempt to boost Twit­ter rev­enue. Rev­enue has dropped sharply since Musk took over the com­pany and laid off roughly three-fourths of the work­force to slash costs and avoid bank­ruptcy.

Lur­ing advert­isers is essen­tial for Musk and Twit­ter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media plat­form, fear­ing dam­age to their brands in the envel­op­ing chaos. Advert­isers have cut back on spend­ing partly because of changes Musk has made that has allowed for more hate­ful con­tent to flour­ish and that has offen­ded a wider part of the plat­form’s audi­ence.

Musk said in late April that advert­isers had returned, but provided no spe­cif­ics.

Musk’s move to change Twit­ter’s logo to an “X” also comes as Twit­ter faces new com­pet­i­tion from Meta’s new app, Threads, launched earlier this month. It has been seen as an altern­at­ive for those who have been upset with Twit­ter.

Threads is being billed as a text-based ver­sion of Meta’s photo- shar­ing app Ins­tagram that the com­pany has said offers “a new, sep­ar­ate space for real-time updates and pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions.”

In the first five days of its launch, 100 mil­lion people had signed up for Threads, accord­ing to a post on Threads by Ins­tagram head Adam Mos­seri.