UNITED NATIONS, July 26. /TASS/. Western countries’ attempts to pin the blame for damaging Odessa’s Transfiguration Cathedral are frustrating and incomprehensible, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said at a United Nations Security Council session dedicated to Ukraine.

"I cannot deny that we are extremely frustrated and baffled by the attempts made by a number of Western delegations to speculate on this week’s huge tragedy - the severe damage to the Transfiguration Cathedral in the city of Odessa - and to ascribe responsibility for this to Russia," Polyansky said.

"If your capital cities paid some attention to the truth, they would refrain from such insinuations," he added.

According to the diplomat, "if a Russian missile had indeed hit the cathedral, as [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s regime rushed to claim, there would have been nothing left of the cathedral at all."

"However, it is damaged, but not destroyed," Polyansky said, stressing that the manner of the damage "is a dead giveaway for the Kiev regime and an unmistakable indication that the cathedral was hit by a surface-to-air munition of Ukraine’s air defense system.".