Viktor Shapoval has led Askania-Nova for two months longer than the duration of the full-scale war with russia. Prior to this role, he served for 20 years as a research officer and head of the biomonitoring and protected steppe laboratory within the reserve, joining right after graduating from Kherson State University. Over this time, he has not only acquired extensive knowledge about the unique steppe environment but has also, as he says, developed a deep love for Askania. It pains him to watch from afar as the reserve suffers under russian occupation, a situation he shares in the following interview.

History and Significance

The full-scale invasion marks Askania’s third encounter with war, and military conflicts are fundamentally incompatible with preserving natural reserves. During the Second World War, German and Soviet forces ravaged Askania-Nova’s infrastructure, showing little regard for the animals’ welfare; the Germans even transported a significant part of the collection away. This happened during the First World War as well. Currently, only its distance from the frontline provides a degree of safety.

Askania-Nova was seized on the first day of the full-scale invasion without notable resistance as the fighting began closer to the Dnipro River and near Melitopol. There were only isolated clashes near the reserve, and damaged military vehicles were found on its outskirts. However, the level of combat intensity witnessed in other Ukrainian protected areas did not occur in Askania-Nova.

It wasn’t until two months later, on May 2, 2022, that representatives of the occupation authorities arrived. During their visit, I heard much “instruction” about the so-called “special military operation,” responsibility, and other such nonsense. I made my Ukrainian stance and a lack of desire to cooperate clear. That, unsurprisingly, was not well-received. I also stated the amount required to sustain the reserve, and from their reaction, I saw that they appeared “a bit” surprised. They assumed they could simply step in and “rescue” us but this happened to be too expensive.

I believe the reason for their initial delay in coming to Askania-Nova was banal: they prioritized capturing profitable farms and agricultural enterprises. There is no need to look for any environmental logic or understanding of the historical value of Askania-Nova in their actions. They were utterly disinterested in the history, cultural and ecological value, or international conservation status of the reserve. 

Money and Support

The reserve is a budget-funded institution, so we had a procurement plan, with the final stages of tendering scheduled for late February. Naturally, everything was disrupted, and we faced a challenge in sourcing food for the animals. This didn’t mean starvation struck immediately. We had some reserves, but the feed consumption in Askania-Nova is quite high.

The frontline severely disrupted and cut off all logistics — Askania-Nova essentially turned into an isolated island amid a swamp. We had no choice but to openly request help via social media. It was a risky move; it’s no secret that the FSB monitors social media.

When we posted our first message about Askania-Nova’s critical needs, we connected with Oleksandr Todorchuk [founder of UAnimals]. Late that night, he wired us a substantial amount. A person we had never interacted with understood the situation and trusted us. We used that initial donation from UAnimals to purchase the first batch of feed. And we are incredibly grateful.

All those willing to help, including international partners and charitable organizations, could only support us financially. Delivering supplies to Askania-Nova from [Ukraine-]controlled territory was impossible, and requesting it from the other side was simply immoral, and we rejected that idea outright. We purchased goods within the occupied territory from our local farms. Thanks to this assistance, we managed to sustain ourselves in almost autonomous mode for more then a year.

Duty and Responsibility

The question of evacuation was not open for me for a long time. The responsibility for the reserve rested squarely on me as the director. For employees whose presence wasn’t essential on-site, we implemented remote work. However, those who cared for the animals and plants remained in the reserve on their workplaces.

We are neither a library nor a trolleybus depot — you can’t close us for a certain period of time and ask the animals to wait.

I left on the last day before the annexation was announced, on September 30, 2022. During the seven months I was in Askania, we stabilized the situation — securing feed, building materials for routine repairs, and spare parts for equipment maintenance.

A budget-funded institution has specific obligations, such as preparing financial and scientific reports. While on occupied territory, I couldn’t fulfill these. By leaving, I was able to meet with our partners and arrange charitable funding for the reserve, managing Askania-Nova remotely.

Even in such challenging circumstances, the reserve operated under Ukrainian jurisdiction. It’s telling that on collaborator Volodymyr Saldo’s channel, there was information of Askania-Nova “sabotaging” the russian authorities’ orders for over a year — a recognition of our resistance by the invaders themselves. To me, “sabotaged” is too mild a term.

On March 20, 2023, Dmitry Meshcheryakov was installed as the occupation director. Since then, all charitable expenses for Askania-Nova’s upkeep have ceased.

We still receive information about what is happening in the reserve, but I no longer have direct leverage. We document all the damage to the natural and artificial ecosystems in Askania-Nova, develop proposals for assessing these damages, and relay this to the relevant authorities and agencies to ensure future compensation through reparations from the agressor.

Our scientific work continues. We received a certification confirming the institution’s status as a scientific establishment, we continue to carry out a research program, and publish the professional journal Bulletin of the Biosphere Reserve Askania-Nova. 

There are still many things that can be accomplished remotely. For example, we document all fires. Up until March 2023, we could inspect fire zones directly, but now we rely on satellite images.

Negligence and Lawlessness

In August 2023, there was a large-scale fire in the Great Chapelsky Hollow [also referred to as the Great Chapelsky Lowland] where hoofed animals are kept. Predictably, the invaders immediately blamed the Ukrainian Armed Forces, alleging that artillery fire was the cause. They even announced some sort of investigation, but judging by the silence that followed, they quickly realized their own involvement in the course of this “investigation.”

The lack of proper scientific and veterinary oversight in the reserve causes significant issues and animal deaths. For instance, in November 2023, three African buffaloes died on the Big Chapelsky Pod. You might ask why a warm-climate African animal was left in unsuitable conditions in November. The answer is simple: the occupation administration has no relevant experience. They failed to properly move the animals to winter enclosures. Another animal died from an injury caused by a vehicle — a buffalo fractured its cervical vertebra and died on the spot. We have reported all these incidents to law enforcement.

The animals also suffer from the constant flyovers of russian aircraft above Askania. In August 2022, during one such flyover, a nilgai antelope panicked and collided with a concrete wall. Environmental laws prohibit flying over reserves due to the stress it causes the animals.

The invaders are even stealing our animals. On December 1, 2023, they took seven animals, including two Przewalski’s horses. We notified the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, the National Commission for UNESCO, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through official letters.

The Przewalski’s horse is a species listed under a special appendix to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which russia has also ratified. But whether the terrorist state follows international norms is a rhetorical question.

Only the liberation of Askania-Nova will put a stop to the invaders’ unlawful actions. The only real safeguard against this is the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Currently, Askania is operating on inertia, surviving solely due to the dedication of the Ukrainian staff with many years of experience.

Yet, I have to give the occupation authorities credit — they’ve become adept at creating an image of “happy life” under the russian flag. The russians have now opened up excursion routes and are claiming it as an achievement. These routes existed long before the occupation administration arrived and even long before I was born — dating back to Friedrich von Falz-Fein (1863–1920) was the founder of Askania-Nova nature reserve complex.Friedrich von Falz-Fein. Only professional propagandists could so skillfully claim others’ accomplishments as their own and parade them as their achievements.

Liberation and Restoration

We are currently in a state of uncertainty. Only after the liberation will we understand exactly what needs to be restored in Askania-Nova.

It’s clear that the invaders will take some animals away, and some will die. But I believe some animals will remain — surviving even through catastrophic circumstances. We will work to restore their populations.

We might face a major demining problem in the reserve. The soil cover is also damaged by craters and trenches. The invaders started digging a trench even in the virgin steppe, but we managed to stop these insane actions. 

We know that trees are being cut down in the arboretum, and certain significant collections have already perished. We will need to restore the infrastructure, the territory, collection funds, and the natural ecosystems.

Through this experience, I can say that I’ve come to fully grasp a deep love and attachment to Askania-Nova, one that only became clear to me when I was deprived of it. I am no different from the hundreds of other enthusiasts working in the nature conservation field. It’s not highly profitable, but for us, it’s a calling. This is work that captures you and demands a natural reverence for nature. It’s a commitment for life.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Main image: Viktor Shapoval. Source: Dim TV channel

Giant mutant rats and two-headed dogs — the legends surrounding Chornobyl are countless. Add to that the eerie vibe of deserted, desolate lands, and it’s no wonder tourists from around the world have flocked here, particularly fans of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series and viewers of HBO’s miniseries. 

But Chornobyl isn’t about romance; it’s about tragedy. This land suffered deeply under Soviet rule in the 1980s, and now, since 2022, it faces similar harm from its successor, russia. On the very first day of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, their troops entered the Exclusion Zone, occupying it and the Chornobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve. They dug trenches in the Red Forest, raising radioactive dust with their heavy equipment.

Now, after liberation, Chornobyl is also a militarized zone, as Ukraine’s army works to prevent the occupation from happening again. At the same time, it remains a nature reserve. The head of scientific research at the Chornobyl Reserve and the researcher who authored the book The Terrible, The Beautiful and The Ugly in Chornobyl details the transformation of local nature from the post-disaster era to the wartime period.

After the Disaster, or the Natural Stages of Acceptance

“When the accident occurred at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, specialists and military personnel — the so-called liquidators — filled the 30-kilometer zone around it,” says Denys Vyshnevskyi, who has led the Chornobyl Reserve’s scientific department for five years.

He adds that in the first days, efforts focused on reducing radioactive emissions from the damaged reactor and minimizing environmental consequences. 

“Ukrainian zoologists and botanists who began studying the Zone after the disaster developed a timeline of the ecological consequences of the catastrophe. They identified three stages, which we now refer to as shock, reset, and stabilization,” Vyshnevskyi explains.

Shock

The first stage, which lasted a few months, saw the most intense radioactive impact on the environment. 

“During this period, within a 10-square-kilometer forested area around the station — which bore the brunt of radioactive dust emissions following the reactor explosion — the pine trees began to die. Pine is nearly as sensitive to radiation as humans. The needles lost their chlorophyll and turned a rusty red color. This became the Red Forest,” says the scientist.

Reset

Then came the reset phase, which began in the latter half of 1986 and lasted until 1991. Vyshnevskyi describes it as follows: “Certain animals left Chornobyl, typically those dependent on human presence, such as the common pigeon and the house mouse. Some livestock animals perished due to being abandoned. Wild species moved in, replacing them, since they now had more space and less competition. This led to a gradual revival of typical Polissia [natural geographic region] wildlife.”

In some cases, domestic animals turned feral, a phenomenon still observable today. “A unique ecological experiment has unfolded in Lubianka, a village near the former town of Poliske. There, a man who kept cattle passed away, and his cows have now roamed freely for five years, living like wild aurochs along the river’s floodplain,” Vyshnevskyi shares.

Stabilization

By 1991, Chornobyl’s environment had reached a stage of stabilization and gradual recovery, where changes began to follow natural processes again. Vyshnevskyi notes that since then, the Zone’s ecosystem has started to resemble Polissia’s typical landscape.

Radiobiologist Olena Pareniuk recalls that around 2010, the Chornobyl Reserve experienced a surge in wild boar populations. “At that time, protection against them was installed. The animals would break through to the Zone and gnaw everything around them. And then, due to a plague, the number of wild boars decreased dramatically. For some time there were no wolves in the Zone, and then they appeared. It was incredible to see how nature changes and regulates itself.”

However, making conclusive scientific conclusions about how nature has adapted or why remains premature. Radiobiologist Kateryna Shavanova emphasizes that three decades of research are insufficient; at least another thirty years are needed.

In reality, long-term studies have been limited. Pareniuk notes that despite inspirational discussions about Chornobyl being an open-air laboratory, consistent funding, essential for any kind of research, has always been lacking for scientists studying the area.

“Studying wildlife, and especially evolutionary changes in wildlife, requires an experiment. Not a three-day laboratory experiment but an experiment throughout the entire life cycle. No one has ever conducted such research [there] because funding is only available now and then. Such things, however, require consistency. Therefore, unfortunately, no one can say with scientific accuracy how radiation affected the fauna of the Zone. We can only conclude that the animals have adapted,” explains radiobiologist Kateryna Shavanova, though she cautions that even this observation is not scientifically definitive.

In the absence of rigorous science, pseudoscience often takes hold. It plays into myths and rumors, abundant fantasies born of fear and ignorance.

Radiobiologist Kateryna Shavanova says that there are some unscrupulous scientists who have a fairly high citation index. However, the experiments of these scientists from different countries raise many questions: “They study, for example, two pairs of animals but make large-scale and ambitious conclusions. In fact, it’s freak research, which is then used to build conspiracy theories.”

The researcher also adds that in Chornobyl studies, it is crucial to factor in not just radiation but also climate change. 

“Yes, we can observe differences between animals in the Chornobyl Zone and those outside it. But we need to understand where these differences come from — whether they’re due to radiation or other environmental factors,” she explains. 

Olena Pareniuk emphasizes that it is also essential to accept the fact that nature does not always adapt. When animals moved, they were exposed to radiation, and the next generations could no longer be viable. In this case, we will not see adaptation: nature simply wiped someone out.

Chornobyl and War

“Sometimes I want to lament how the war affected Chornobyl. To lament the mining, the fact that the reserve suffered through the fighting… But then I remember how the chalk mountain landscapes in the east are being demolished, and I realize that complaining doesn’t seem ethical,” says Denys Vyshnevskyi.

He explains that although hostilities did harm nature, they did not destroy it. The full extent of the damage is still being assessed. Over the 36 days of occupation, russian forces looted approximately two million hryvnias’ worth of equipment, stole vehicles, and damaged facilities.

Estimating environmental damage from landmines, unexploded munitions, and forest fires is more challenging. In a report on the condition of the Chornobyl Reserve after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, its employees said that russian troops were quite active in the air over the protected area. The noise from planes and helicopters causes stress to wild animals. For example, it was reported that a nilgai antelope died in the Askania Nova reserve as a result of the invaders’ flights over the reserve, causing the exotic animal to crash into the fence of the enclosure.

russian military vehicles also traversed the reserve, and Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant staff reported russian tanks moving through the Red Forest. Likely due to this, on February 24, 2022, Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate detected a spike in gamma radiation near the plant.

Thus, since the liberation, Chornobyl has become a bizarre fusion of the military and the pristine. Where once there was an industrial-pristine mix, a third aspect has been added. “We visited Chornobyl in May of this year. The area is now well-prepared for defense — trenches, dugouts, mines… On the one hand, that is not what a reserve should be like. On the other hand, because of the strong defenses, the russians will not be able to break through from this direction again,” says Olena Pareniuk.

Still, researchers emphasize the importance of preserving Chornobyl as a conservation area.

“Polissia no longer exists as it once was. The swamps are drying up — climate change is doing its job. At the same time, however, swamps are an important factor that slows down climate change. Chornobyl is the area that is most strongly reminiscent of the authentic Polissia,” Kateryna Shavanova explains.

Moreover, the swamps also hinder enemy movement. Thus, restoring wetlands can enhance the defensive properties of the protected landscape in an environmentally friendly way. At least in this way, the war could have a positive impact on Chornobyl. Currently, it only causes destruction, hinders the development of the reserve, and prevents it from fulfilling its educational and research functions. 

Denys Vyshnevskyi says that the primary goal of the Chornobyl Reserve until 2006 was to overcome the consequences of the disaster. Then came the so-called empty era. Only in 2016, under the leadership of Vitalii Petruk, Director of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management, a new concept was proposed for the development of the reserve: not overcoming, but using the territory. In particular, the Exclusion Zone was to become a research site and a place for testing radiation protection technologies.

All of this is about safety, and in this concept, the workers of the reserve identified the development of safety as the main task of the Zone. Back in 2016, they had no idea how right they were.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Main and last images: The Exclusion Zone through the eyes of airborne assault troops. Source: WAR CREW Telegram channel

Rallies, photo exhibitions, film screenings, installations in European cities and overseas — activists and politicians often raise the issue of ecocide. They draw attention to crimes against the environment and call for the punishment of the perpetrators. However, just punishment requires not only high-profile events and publicity, but also meticulous legal work. 

This is exactly what the team of the Truth Hounds NGO do: they study facts, collect evidence and testimonies, compile legal theories, and thus help law enforcement officers in Ukraine and abroad bring the perpetrators to justice. 

Next, we will talk about the ins and outs of this work: why Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are registering fewer and fewer cases under the ecocide article, whether Ukrainian and international law protects the environment in times of war, and how Ukraine’s ratification of the Rome Statute will help.

The Work of Truth Hounds

— Truth Hounds has been studying environmental damage from hostilities in eastern Ukraine since before the full-scale invasion. Could you tell us about the most serious incidents you documented at that time?

— In the occupied part of the Donetsk region, russians decommissioned mines without proper safety measures. As a result, these inactive mines were filled with water. This is dangerous for several reasons. First, after coal mining, harmful substances settle in the mines. Second, there was information that some mines were used to test underground nuclear explosions. The radioactive materials generated after the explosions and other harmful substances from the mines can seep with the water into different layers of the soil. 

— Have you tried looking for those responsible for this negligence? 

— Our goal was not so much to expose those who planned, organized, and authorized the decommissioning of the mines, but to highlight russia’s treatment of nature in the occupied territories. However, the environmental damage in the war-torn territories, even before the full-scale invasion, is not limited to the coal industry. According to our Training and Strategic Projects Coordinator Maryna Slobodianiuk, potential war crimes include the shelling of the Avdiivka Coke Plant, Lysychansk Oil Refinery, the burning of dead wood in the Luhansk region, and the fire at the Azot Factory. However, all of these cases require not only rigorous investigation, but also long-term monitoring of the environmental impact. After all, it is important to prove that the actions of the russians have caused extensive and lasting damage to the environment.

— Next, let us consider a case where the damage is large-scale and very obvious: the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam. On the anniversary of the disaster, Truth Hounds released a study proving that the russians were responsible. You called on the International Criminal Court to conduct a thorough investigation of this crime and to expel russia from the bodies of environmental conventions. Did you manage to achieve this?

— Our position was not romantic: we did not expect that the investigation would immediately lead to a response and the exclusion of russia from everywhere. We simply stated our position: it is unacceptable to involve russia in discussions about the future of the world in terms of environmental protection when it treats the environment with such disregard.

It is difficult to say to what extent the bodies of environmental conventions hear and consider these calls. It is important to understand that not all countries understand what is happening in the same way as we and the Western world do. Some either see the world differently, or have limited information, or simply cannot afford to support the position of Western powers without a second thought. So, there are limits to the exclusion of russia from various organizations, even if much has been achieved. I think we are standing somewhere on this threshold, and we should not be expecting russia to be actively excluded any further. At the same time, calls for this must be voiced. 

So far, we have held only a few advocacy events, such as a discussion in The Hague at the Environmental Peacebuilding Association conference. But there are other events coming up — several events with a focus on environmental organizations, including those from the United Nations system. Perhaps this will give more space to share the truth about what happened in Kakhovka. 

Also, the International Criminal Court is definitely looking at this episode and deciding whether to move forward with a full investigation. It depends not only on how serious a crime russia has committed, but also on the prosecutor’s overall strategy.

— Do our law enforcement agencies take into account the information collected by Truth Hounds documenters about this crime?

— Just a few days after the presentation of the report, we received a request from the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor’s Office: they asked us to officially provide them with the report and all the information we had collected, because this is the only way they can take this evidence into account. We provided all the materials. 

However, this is not the only line of our cooperation. We have also organized three workshops at the request of the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor’s Office. We shared the experience gained while writing the report and explained to prosecutors how international law regulates environmental protection and defines crimes against the environment. 

We have also presented our findings in the Kakhovka case to prosecutors from both the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor’s Office and the Department of War. This can help them better prepare for the trial. After all, there are quite a few options for describing the Kakhovka tragedy in legal terms. That description determines what evidence to collect, how to combine it, and the general logic of the assessment to be offered to the court.

Ecocide or Not?

— The destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam is almost a textbook example of ecocide, which is most often mentioned in the media. But the Prosecutor General’s Office also named the occupation of the Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants as examples. Why can these actions of the russians be characterized as ecocide? What other crimes would you call ecocide? 

— Not every kind of environmental damage during a war can be considered ecocide. International humanitarian law applies in such circumstances, allowing for the shelling of the territory of another state and environmental damage during such shelling. The only requirement is that the damage must be proportional to the military advantage anticipated. Therefore, only a violation of this requirement can be called a war crime or a war crime and ecocide. 

The Specialized Environmental Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine is considering a number of such episodes. 

For example, the attack on the Kakhovka dam can be qualified as an attack on a civilian target or a disproportionate attack on a military target, which is a war crime. Due to the environmental consequences of this crime, we can call it ecocide. In this case, we can definitely consider a double classification.

I think the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant can be a similar case. This is an attack on a protected site that can be considered a war crime. Next, we need to look at the damage, be it actual or potential. 

In the case of the Chornobyl power plant, however, it is not so much an attack on the facility itself as its use to shield military operations. Under international humanitarian law, there is an obligation not to locate military facilities near civilian ones. There might be a possibility to consider such actions as a war crime, and if there was damage to the environment, it may be labelled as ecocide as well. 

Another angle that prosecutors focused on was attacks on oil storage facilities and other fuel storage facilities. The environmental damage here is obvious, and at least it falls under the Ukrainian definition of ecocide. However, international humanitarian law considers such facilities to be military rather than civilian. In order to consider attacks on them as a war crime and ecocide, one would have to develop a very sophisticated legal framework. 

The crime of ecocide can also be seen in the management actions of the russians in the occupied territories. If they cause damage to the environment, it can be characterized as ecocide even without being linked to a war crime. Currently, we do not have access to that territory, so information is limited and it is difficult to proceed. But after the liberation, everything is possible. 

— Could the actions of the russians in Askania-Nova and other occupied reserves be called ecocide? For example, the kidnapping of rare animals, their negligent treatment, and fires in the virgin steppe.

— Any definition of ecocide is heavily burdened with value categories and lacks specificity. The Ukrainian definition under the criminal code states that an environmental catastrophe must be caused. There is no definition of an environmental catastrophe in Ukrainian law, so it all depends on how investigators interpret this concept: by encyclopedic definitions or by experts. 

Alternatively, to substantiate ecocide, the concept of “mass destruction of flora or fauna” will be required. It is also not defined, so it needs to be interpreted. Will the removal of a few animals from Askania Nova be a mass elimination of wildlife? Hardly. Is it possible to build an ecocide case against Askania-Nova in general? Perhaps. But to prove that this is an environmental disaster, we need to show its impact on the future.

How Laws Work

— Article 441 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine really lacks specifics about what constitutes ecocide. Some environmental activists and human rights defenders are calling for amendments to this article. Others object, saying that then we will not be able to retroactively punish crimes that russians have already committed in Ukraine. What do you think?

— I am not against changes to the article. It can be improved and harmonized with the international definition of ecocide, which is important for promoting its criminalization. I do not see any major risks that the amendments to the article will affect previous investigations. The old law will still be applied to previous episodes. 

— The Prosecutor General’s Office provides the following statistics on Article 441: 16 cases were opened in 2022, and seven in 2023. All of them are still under pre-trial investigation. In 2024, no cases were opened at all. Why do you think the figures are on the decline? It would seem that more and more testimonies and evidence should have surfaced.

— For me, this is an indication that the system is recovering. Prosecutors are becoming more aware of how difficult it is to prosecute environmental damage. They are carefully allocating resources to cases with real chances of achieving results in line with international standards, avoiding the pursuit of the number of registrations. 

— What is even more confusing about these figures is that the Prosecutor General’s Office has only been investigating ecocide crimes since February 2022. But the war began eight years before that. We have already discussed that even back then, russians were committing environmental crimes. Why do you think such cases were not opened earlier? 

— Previously, crimes against the environment were classified under other articles. For example, they used to prosecute for illegal mining. 

However, there is now international interest in criminalizing ecocide. There is no statute of limitations for such crimes, so it is possible to hold russia accountable for damage to the Ukrainian environment if sufficient evidence is found. Difficulties with this arise due to the lack of access to the occupied territories: we have not been in Crimea for more than 10 years. All we have are satellite images and testimonies of those who have left. But I think it is quite possible to accomplish at least some things. As for mining in the Crimean protected areas, it can be considered ecocide.

— Most people say that the main responsibility for the russian ecocide in Ukraine lies with the leadership of the terrorist state. They unleashed the war and issue criminal orders. But can we also bring to justice those russian military personnel who commit environmental crimes? 

— We can, but it depends on two key things: how much these soldiers participated in the illegal actions and what they knew about the consequences. For example, if the perpetrators had been told that the Kakhovka dam [disaster] would be a targeted explosion and that the amount of explosives would destroy only a small part of it, we could not charge them with a war crime. However, our report contains evidence to the contrary. We have a video where russian soldiers talked about the consequences of the dam destruction. 

Similarly, at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, we know of cases where the russian military tortures workers. This is a crime, and they jeopardize the safety of the entire power plant. Artillerymen who direct fire against the plant, especially repeatedly, know exactly where they are aiming. So it is not only the military and political leadership of russia that is responsible for these crimes.

On the Rome Statute and the Criminalization of Ecocide

— Ukraine has recently ratified the Rome Statute. Will we now be able to more actively advocate for the criminalization of ecocide? 

— Ukraine now has a number of options available to it, the key of which is the ability to vote and initiate consideration of issues at the assembly regarding the introduction of ecocide as a fifth international crime. 

We can also better understand internal sentiment: previously, we had only a general idea of which countries supported the criminalization of ecocide, but within the system, the position of each participant is more obvious. Thus, it is possible to more accurately calibrate the approach to raising awareness of this crime in bilateral relations with a particular nation. 

— Do you think other countries are ready to criminalize ecocide? 

— There are definitely governments today that strongly support the criminalization of ecocide. A certain coalition of countries has already been established, but there is no full consensus yet. 

Opponents of criminalization have a number of reservations. In particular, they fear that accusing company executives of ecocide will limit international business and that such accusations will be used politically. Some believe that the four defined crimes are enough to punish environmental offenders. In particular, crimes against humanity cover other inhumane acts, which theoretically may be the acts of ecocide.

Experts and entire nations are working to convince most countries in the world to criminalize ecocide. Because it will protect the environment rather than lead to a global catastrophe.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Main image: Dmytro Koval. Source: Truth Hounds.

Militaries worldwide emit greenhouse gases that accelerate global warming. russia, with all its emissions caused by war, is accelerating the process even more. Meanwhile, we are no more than four years away from a 1.5°C rise in the global average annual temperature relative to pre-industrial levels.

Can anything still be done?

Olha Chevhaniuk, Head of Strategic Initiatives at UAnimals, talked about this with Lennard de Klerk live on air. We share the highlights of this conversation.  

A Little Green Capitalist

I grew up in a Dutch village with three older brothers. All of us brothers had several nicknames. One of my nicknames was Green Capitalist. Capitalist — because I didn’t mind making money, Green came because I was always concerned about the environment and cleaning up our mess.

My father had a factory. He produced packaging material for flowers, which is very fitting for the Netherlands. As a child during summers, I worked in the factory, and because of that, I became interested in the environment. You know, see all the plastic, you have waste materials… I was often working with a small recycling machine, trying to reuse the plastic materials. It was already a circular economy in the early days.

I started my studies in the early nineties when the Soviet Union fell apart. I realized that we in the West had no clue about what we called the East block, about all these different countries and nations. My parents had a satellite dish and I was playing a lot with it. I managed to get all these TV channels from Hungary, Romania, and the Baltic states. I got sort of interested in the part of Europe I knew nothing about. So, I started working in an engineering and consulting firm, which had its biggest office in Kyiv.

I knew nothing about Ukraine. I’m ashamed to say it now, but like many of us, I thought it was “sort of russia, but a little bit different.” I lived there for several years, traveled around the country, and learned about its regions and proud history, and I fell a little bit in love with the country. It was 1999-2001 — these were difficult times for Ukraine. The murder of the journalist Georgiy Gongadze happened, Leonid Kuchma was a president, so it was not always going in the right direction, but you could see a country developing so much differently from russia.

To cut a long story short, when I got back to the Netherlands, I started working for the Dutch government and got involved in climate change, helping to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

What brought you to research the impact of the war on climate change?

I live in Hungary and run a climate-neutral resort there. When the full-scale invasion started, we were able to house many Ukrainians who were on their way to Europe so that they could recover from the week in a car. I thought, what can I do besides helping refugees?

Since climate change is my expertise, I started thinking about what russian aggression does to the climate. When I started to work on this topic, I told friends and colleagues, and we realized that this was never done before — to look at the impact of conflict on climate.

The impact of this war is mostly on Ukraine’s territory. However, it also increases greenhouse gas emissions and accelerates global warming. I believe that by telling this story, we will also be able to show that russian aggression impacts the world.  

A Reminder about Climate Change

Climate change is caused by the emission of so-called greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas, but we have other gases besides CO2: methane, nitrous oxide, halogenated other gases. There are also gases such as sulphur dioxide, ammonia and black carbon aerosols. They all accumulate in the atmosphere. As a result, they trap the heat of the sun. That is why the average temperature in the world is going up.

In the UN’s Paris Agreement, we agreed to limit this increase in temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. We cannot stop climate change anymore, it’s too late. But if we limit it to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, it is more or less manageable.  

If we get to 2 degrees or more, we will not be able to manage it anymore: catastrophic weather events can occur. We will have people on the move, etc. 

We only have 4 years left before the amount of greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere is already enough to raise temperatures by 1.5 degrees.

So, we really have to work very hard to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically. But russia, with this war, is doing the opposite — it is causing more emissions. It is basically accelerating the growth of temperature and, therefore, the impact of climate change. 

War in Ukraine and Greenhouse Gases — What’s in Common?

What are the key environmental consequences of this war?

We concluded that the total emissions caused by the war were 175 tons of CO2.

•   It is the same as the Netherlands, with 18 million inhabitants emits in a year. The Netherlands is a highly industrialized country.
•   It is the same as putting 90 million new petrol cars on the road.
•   Or building 260 coal-fired power plant units of 200 MW each.

It is significant. 

Of course, if you look at the total picture of the world’s emissions, it is relatively small. But again — you should understand that we should bring the emissions down, they should ultimately reach zero. But the war is pushing emissions in the opposite direction.

How much of an impact do the burning russian oil depots have on climate?

We looked at different categories of emissions, including energy infrastructure — all the emissions caused by the damage done to power stations. That includes the emissions from oil depots that are put burning not only in russia, but also the oil depots that russians have destroyed in Ukraine. The total impact of energy infrastructure is 10%. But if we look at burning deposits, it’s relatively small. It’s below 1% of the total.

More important is the direct use of the military. All these tanks, all these vehicles use enormous amounts of diesel and kerosene. And that causes tremendous amounts of emissions.

Are more emissions generated in russia since they are at war, increasing manufacturing and energy use?

Yes, in particular in the production of military equipment. They use a lot of steel, and steel is a very carbon-intensive material. We haven’t seen the numbers yet. Every country must report their emission numbers to the UN with a 2-year delay, and russia hasn’t published its report for 2022. But I do expect an increase there.

Where does russia rank in terms of emissions on a global scale?

The first one is China, second is the USA. russia is ranked fifth.

Ukraine is much lower, simply because it’s a smaller country.

If the war doesn’t stop, what changes will we have?

Climate change will continue. It might very well be that these extra emissions caused by russia will not impact Ukraine but will cause flooding in Bangladesh or fire in the Amazon. It’s a global phenomenon. You cannot distinguish who caused what. This is just contributing to the buildup of greenhouse gases. 

The Indirect Impact

Do you feel your studies influence decision-making? 

It’s an eye-opener. As it was an eye-opener for me to see that conflict does so much to climate.

Militaries all around the world emit much CO2, even if there’s no war. Military emissions are about 5% of the world’s total. They train, they practice using military transport…  

russian aggression made all Europe realize that we are not safe—therefore, we have to invest more in defense. Many countries in Europe are increasing military spending and investing more in military equipment. That means military emissions will also go up. With a delay, it will increase emissions worldwide.

I fully understand that climate change is not the biggest problem for Ukraine now. You are fighting to survive as a nation. This story doesn’t hit the headlines in Ukraine; I think it’s normal.

But what you see in Europe, militaries like NATO realize that they contribute a lot to climate change. One of my latest conferences was in June in Oslo, about European defense, where several militaries came together to discuss how they can reduce the environmental impact of what they do. Climate change was one of the main topics. They agree to start working on decarbonization, reducing emissions. So it is getting there.

Another interesting impact of wars is that the war also changed supply lines in the world.

russia closed its airspace above Siberia for Western airplanes. If you fly from London to Tokio, it normally takes 11 hours, but now airlines take completely different routes over Canada, which makes the flight 4 hours longer, meaning more kerosine, more CO2 emissions. We are working on getting more precise numbers of the impact on aviation.

It has parallels with conflicts around the world. For example, houthis are attacking ships in the Red Sea. A lot of marine transport is avoiding the Red Sea; it has to detour Africa, meaning more diesel and more emissions.

After the War

What impact are you expecting from your studies?

The most significant impact would be to hold the russian federation accountable for those emissions. That is a long shot. The legal system works slowly, and it would be particularly for this case. There is no precedent. It will definitely take years. But when it happens, it will show to the world that anyone will be responsible in case of this part of aggression — environmental crime.

A study published in Nature describes the total damage caused by every ton of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere: 185 US dollars. If we consider 175 million tons of CO2, we are talking about damage of almost 33 billion US dollars. This damage will happen somewhere in the world. We don’t know when or where, but it will happen.

That is the compensation we are anticipating from russia.

The idea is that part of the money goes to Ukraine to recover, for example, by replanting the forests that went up on fire because of the shelling. Also, for the reconstruction of buildings, by using less fossil fuels, less steel, but more climate-friendly materials.

The other part should go to the Global South — the developing countries impacted by climate change to improve water management, for example.  

You in Ukraine have such a strong civil society. Once this horrible war is over, reconstruction will be done in a way that is thought-through.

Civil society organizations should be very loud to the government about how to work on it. There will be a lot of money coming from the West to help Ukraine recover, but it is your role as a civil society to make sure this money is well spent.

It will not be easy, but I’m confident you will do it right in a sustainable way. You are tough cookies.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Main image: Lennard de Klerk. Source: Ministry of Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine

“On February 22, 2022, we were in the park on an expedition. We had come to study the population of the Red Data Book species, Crocus reticulatus. It was so quiet,” recalls Oleksandr Khodosovtsev, an employee of the Kamianska Sich National Nature Park. “That was the first time we recorded a white-tailed eagle in the park, and by evening, we reached Puhach Cape. Around 4 o’clock, we set off for Kherson. Only 36 hours remained until the full-scale invasion.”

The invaders entered Kamianska Sich on March 9. After nine months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces drove them out of the steppe in the northern Kherson region, but the park remains under threat from russian forces on the left bank of the Dnipro. Enemy drones hover over the area, and combat engineers are clearing mines by the hundreds.

The park also bears the scars of the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam, as part of the former Kakhovka Reservoir’s water area used to be part of Kamianska Sich.

How has the war altered the landscape, and how does it continue to influence it?  What is happening in this nature park under constant fire? UAnimals Media spoke to the park’s researchers, who initiated its creation — Ivan Moisiyenko and Oleksandr Khodosovtsev. Both are professors at the Department of Botany at Kherson State University.

A Diversity of the Steppes

Most of Ukraine’s steppe reserves are located on the left bank of the Dnipro River and in the south. Kamianska Sich, on the other hand, preserves steppe ecosystems on the right bank in the northern part of the Kherson region. And what a steppe it is!

“This is an area of true, or temperate, steppe,” explains Ivan Moisiyenko. However, it’s not just that. On the south-facing slopes, there are fragments of desert steppe. Its natural zone in Ukraine stretches as a thin strip along the Black Sea. In addition, the park hosts species from the meadow steppes of the forest-steppe zone, such as Stipa tirsa and the European feather grass.

“Desert steppes are located 150 kilometers to the south, while the forest-steppe lies about 200 kilometers to the north. Yet all of these are present in Kamianska Sich! This is truly a unique diversity of steppes,” summarizes Ivan Moisiyenko.

The botanist is also proud of his discovery in the park: “During an expedition, I spotted an unusual grass. It turned out to be Psathyrostachys juncea. This is only the fourth recorded site in Ukraine and the first on the right bank of the Dnipro. Usually, Psathyrostachys juncea is found in the semi-deserts of Kazakhstan.”

Overall, about 500 plant species grow in the park, 10% of which are protected.

Why has the steppe survived here? Parts of it were once used as sheep pastures, so they were never plowed. The broad Mylivska and Kamianska ravines, with their limestone slopes where the Kamianka River once A meander is a curve in the channel of a river.meandered, also remained untouched. Ivan Moisiyenko and Oleksandr Khodosovtsev proposed to the government that this area be designated a protected nature reserve. They had been studying the steppe long before the park was finally officially established in 2019. Ivan recalls, “At first, the steppe seemed just vast. But as we started studying it, we discovered it was also incredibly rich!” And not just plant-wise. 

“That Mole Vole Ruined All Our Excavations!”

“Archaeologists were excavating a Late Scythian settlement. The site was riddled with holes, like Swiss cheese. They asked, ‘What’s been digging around here?’” Ivan Moisiyenko remembers when he was surveying the future park’s territory. The culprit was the endangered northern mole vole. “That mole vole of yours ruined all our excavations!” the archaeologists complained.

Kamianska Sich is home to a large population of mole voles, a small rodent that spends most of its life underground, feeding on the roots of plants. In Ukraine, it is classified as an endangered species.

Another creature that troubles archaeologists is the solifuge, a member of the arachnid family. “This unique species comes to us from the east, from Crimea, and can be found in Kamianska Sich. They look quite terrifying as they scuttle about!” Ivan says. “We had to hide from those solifuges during our expedition in Kazakhstan. They were huge, running around at night. I even saw them in Morocco. And now they’re here in Sich!”

Ivan Moisiyenko first encountered the solifuge in the Kherson region in 2017, and it was, without exaggeration, the meeting of the century. Together with his Polish colleagues, he documented the find in the Ukrainian Entomological Journal. While preparing the academic paper, they unearthed records showing that solifuges were last seen in the Kherson Governorate in 1886-1887. No one had seen them since — until 130 years later when a solifuge was encountered near Kamianska Sich!

The Park After the Invasion

The park was liberated from russian forces on November 10, 2022. On December 1, 2022, Ivan Moisiyenko and Oleksandr Khodosovtsev made their first visit back to the park after its liberation. They were greeted by tons of trash left behind by the invaders.

“We had heard about the ‘love for cleanliness’ of the russian military, but seeing it in person… It was shocking. There was an enormous amount of household waste; about 300 tons were removed from the park,” Oleksandr recounts. Nothing remained of the park’s property — its administrative building was in ruins. During the occupation, the russians took everything: office equipment, vehicles, and boats.

During their first visit, the researchers inspected the steppe slopes of the Mylivska ravine. On their second attempt to access the same area, the military blocked them, as the site had been remotely mined with “butterfly” mines, Oleksandr explains: “It’s still inaccessible because no one has cleared these butterflies.’”

On June 30, the scientists descended to the bottom of the former Kakhovka Reservoir for the first time. “The water had receded more than 10 meters vertically. It was like some kind of Martian landscape,” recalls Oleksandr.

Another remarkable discovery was the reappearance of the Kamianka River, which had existed in this area until 1956 and now flows again through the steppe. In the 18th century, a Cossack fortress called the Kamianska Sich is an administrative and military centre of the Zaporizhian Cossacks.Kamianska Sich, which gave the park its name, stood along its banks.

“Before, we studied nature. I [focused on] lichens while Ivan [studied] plants,” Oleksandr says. “We never thought we’d end up studying the impact of war on the environment. But from our first expedition [after the invasion], that’s exactly what we started doing.”

What Is Impacting the Park’s Ecosystem?

·       ALTERED LANDSCAPE

Explosions in the steppe have left craters—areas of Bombturbation is the disturbance of soil caused by explosions.bombturbation. russian forces also dug trenches and other fortifications on the slopes of the ravines. “The worst part is that a few trenches were dug directly in the untouched, virgin steppe within the protected zone. There aren’t many, but they’re there,” Oleksandr explains.

These fortifications alter the landscape of the flat steppe. Weeds quickly take over these depressions, making it difficult for steppe plants to grow.

“And it’s also a trap for animals. Burrowing animals dig into the trenches, fall in, and can’t get out — both insects and rodents. In Kamianska Sich, even a roe deer fell into a trench and died,” adds Ivan Moisiyenko.

According to park employees, restoring the steppe will require human assistance. Trenches need to be filled in layers: soil on top and limestone on the bottom. Seeds of steppe plants should be sown into the ground. However, this can only be done after complete demining.

·     MINES

“The impact of mining on nature is minimal. In some cases, you could even say it’s positive, mostly for the plant cover, since people can no longer access these areas for illegal activities. It provides temporary extra protection for the reserve,” Oleksandr explains.

However, in mined areas, no field research or monitoring can be conducted — only remote observations are possible. In addition, animals can trigger mines. Mines also cause chemical contamination of the soil that can persist for decades.

The park is being demined by its director, Serhiy Skoryk, along with six volunteer employees who underwent training to become deminers. They carry out the demining work partly on their own and partly in collaboration with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

As of early September, 639 TM-62 anti-tank mines were discovered and neutralized in the park. The workers handed them over to the National Police of Ukraine’s Tsunami assault regiment, which is part of the separate Liut (Fury) assault brigade. These munitions will be used to liberate the left bank of the Kherson region.

·     FIRES

“Fires that occur once every 5-10 years can even benefit the steppe, but frequent fires are harmful,” says Ivan. “Grassy plants generally aren’t affected by the fires; they have underground bulbs that allow them to regenerate the following year. However, shrubs suffer because their regenerative buds are located above the ground.”

According to the scientist, fires don’t cause catastrophic damage to the steppe itself. However, the frequency of fires has exceeded the “safe” limit. The area is constantly burning due to artillery fire or explosives from drones. While the park recorded only three fires in 2021, there were 26 in 2022, 34 in 2023, and more than 30 already in 2024, with the total expected to surpass 50 by the end of the year.

Oleksandr says that fire and heat affect different elements of the Lithophytes are plants that can grow on stones without soil cover. biotopes in various ways. He studies lichens: “If lichens are exposed to thermal radiation from an explosion in the early morning when everything is moist, they will die. We studied one such explosion site and found that within a 100-meter radius of the epicenter, the trees were alive, but the lichens on them had perished.”

On the other hand, lichens that grow on limestone are incredibly resilient. “We examined a crater in the rocky steppe after a Grad [rocket] hit and just a meter from the explosion’s epicenter, we found live lichens on the stones,” Oleksandr explains.

·    DAM DESTRUCTION

“In any case, the biggest impact on the park’s ecosystems came from the destruction of the [Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant] dam,” Oleksandr Khodosovtsev asserts. The landscape has since changed, and scientists now face the question: what will become of this territory? It was a disaster for aquatic ecosystems, which have simply disappeared. “However, the recovery of terrestrial ecosystems on the former Kakhovka Reservoir’s bed is happening at a rapid pace,” Oleksandr adds.

Many have heard of the willow thickets that have sprouted from the silt on the former reservoir bed. Even botanists did not expect nature to recover at such a pace. “But the slopes covered in meters-thick layers of dead shells are slow to regrow,” says Ivan Moisiyenko.

In his view, the spread of steppe vegetation to the slopes is being hindered by a strip of willows and reeds that grew along the former shoreline. Still, Ivan is confident that a so-called Lithophytes are plants that can grow on stones without soil cover. lithophytic steppe will eventually form on the shell deposits: “This is an ideal environment for such steppes. There’s no doubt that they will recover; it will just take time. If the war ended, we could launch a project to restore the lithophytic steppe.” This would involve mowing steppe plants and scattering hay with seeds onto the shell deposits. Otherwise, weeds will take hold first, slowing the steppe’s recovery.

In 2024, botanists visited the bed of the former Kakhovka Reservoir in the Zaporizhzhia region. The area was vast: the distance to the left bank was 15 kilometers. According to the researchers, the situation in the natural environment there is similar to that in Kamianska Sich.

It turns out that the willow thickets will soon become a forest. Previously, these thickets were only called a forest metaphorically, as a true forest has different layers. Now, those layers are beginning to form. Ivan explains: “This year, we observed a more complex plant structure and the development of layers. The tallest willows have risen above the herb layer — this is now the shrub layer; bryophytes have appeared, forming the moss-lichen layer. In our classification, plants taller than 5 meters fall into the tree layer. Next year, the tree layer will definitely appear, and a forest will have formed.”

The number of plant species on the former reservoir bed has also increased. During the first expedition, 11 species were recorded. During the second, 69 species were found, and in the third expedition to the Zaporizhzhia region, around 30 more species were discovered. In total, more than 100 species of plants have appeared in the area within a year.

Additionally, a protected species, rye sedge, was found on the former bed for the first time. “This indicates that the plant cover is acquiring conservation value,” says Ivan.

“They Directed Fire at Us”

Near Kamianska Sich, the Dnipro River is 4-5 kilometers wide, with its narrowest point being just 3 kilometers and 300 meters across. “You can see people walking [on the other shore] through binoculars,” says Ivan Moisiyenko. This area is easily reachable by russian drones and artillery, which regularly bombard the park. Despite this, the park’s security service and its director, Serhiy Skoryk, remain on-site, demining the area, monitoring fires, and keeping an eye on the water bodies.

Even in demined areas, research is impossible due to the threat from russian drones. Oleksandr Khodosovtsev recalls an incident in October 2023 when a reconnaissance drone hovered over him: “They directed fire at us. Five minutes after we moved away, they fired three mortar shells at that spot.” FPV drones, which are now frequently used, can be almost undetectable, and there isn’t always enough time to react. “The only defense against them is EW stands for electronic warfare measures that can jam drones.EW, but you can’t stay in a vehicle all the time — you’ll need to step out into nature. To properly document the vegetation on a monitoring plot, you need an hour. In that time, enemy drones will definitely spot you.” As for zoologists, they haven’t even been able to conduct research in the park, as their tasks require significantly more time.

At this point, the researchers are not only focusing on nature but have also begun collecting data on human activity. This includes the memories of park employees—nature protection inspectors — who, during the occupation, assisted the Ukrainian Armed Forces in destroying a significant amount of enemy equipment.

The botanists are also searching for information about the first Ukrainian soldiers who entered Kamianska Sich after its liberation. Oleksandr explains: “We want to learn the names of the fallen Ukrainian heroes who were the first to step onto the park’s steppe slopes and honor their memory. Unfortunately, their vehicle hit a mine, and they all perished.”

Reaching the Old Riverbed

Ivan Moisiyenko and Oleksandr Khodosovtsev are determined to continue their research, and they remain hopeful that, despite current conditions, they will be able to work directly in Kamianska Sich. So far, they have managed to visit the northern edges of two ravines, which were previously inlets of the Kakhovka Reservoir. Now, they aim to reach the Dnipro River’s course.

“I think Ivan Ivanovych [Moisiyenko] and I will experience a new emotional surge when we finally reach the Dnipro’s shore in Kamianska Sich,” says Oleksandr.

The researchers are particularly eager to reach the Dnipro’s original bank, which existed before 1956 and is now once again in its original location. They hope to explore the main riverbed and observe the liberated left bank of the Kherson region from the right side of the Dnipro. 

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Budum… Budum… Budum… A white minibus crawls through 300-year-old pine trees. This is the Lithuanian forest in the Hetman National Nature Park. Before it became a protected area, the place was rife with poaching—electrofishing, nets, and 12-gauge hunting rifles.

Later, when the area became a nature reserve, some locals wrote letters to then-President Yanukovych, urging the park to be dissolved. “In a few years, you won’t have anywhere to graze your cows because this land will be privatized, and the fields will be plowed,” the deputy head of the environmental education department recalls telling them. Over time, the locals grew accustomed to the rules. Perhaps, because fines increased tenfold.

Trrr… The head of the Hetman Park’s state protection service stops his car. He needs to inspect the area. He parks at a recreational site with gazebos, tables, and swings. In the past, people from Sumy, Poltava, and Kharkiv would come here to breathe the fresh air. Now, only park staff can enjoy this privilege, as visiting the forests is prohibited. At the beginning of the full-scale war, the park was under russian occupation for nearly a month, and it is potentially contaminated with explosives. While sappers have not yet inspected the area, park scientists have already begun their work.

Nature Adapts

Mykola Hryhorovych points his camera at a fragment in a fallen tree trunk. Nearby, there is a crater from an airstrike that took place back in February 2022. He tilts his head back to observe the tree tops. On one side of the clearing, death has passed through—burned, decayed, dead branches. On the other side, green and living pines. This contrast reveals the wind’s direction on the day of the raid—northern, as the southern side of the trees suffered the most.

Mykola Hryhorovych is the newly appointed head of the park’s research department. Previously, he taught at the Sumy National Agricultural University’s ecology department and brought students here to study the species composition of plants. Now, he and his colleague, entomologist Oleksandr Volodymyrovych, are examining a crater left by a shell.

He scrapes the soil and puts samples into small jars. These are samples for monitoring, which will show the impact of the war on nature. However, it’s too early to draw conclusions now, as changes in the soil might only appear over time. In 20-30 years, a full atomic spectral analysis will be conducted to understand which elements migrate from the soil to the plants.

But now a brief inspection reveals that the plants are determined to overcome difficulties and changes. Birch and pine trees are already regenerating. Perhaps they were growing here before the shelling, and the explosion failed to completely destroy their roots. Or maybe a bird dropped a cone, leading to the growth of new trees. Moss, the first “settler,” is also taking root here. This change in the ecosystem is known as succession. Sometimes, its manifestations can be quite unpredictable.

“How did a marsh species end up here?” Mykola Hryhorovych wonders as he examines a reed stalk and narrowleaf cattail inside the crater. “Maybe the rains helped… but I don’t think there’s been been much rainfall.”

Mykola Hryhorovych calls Oleksandr Volodymyrovych for help. The entomologist dismisses it, saying that it is just moisture that had accumulated. After all, an entomologist is more interested in insects. He pokes the soil with a stick and notices wasp burrows. Striped insects burrow into the sandy slopes, where they breed. With each new crater from a shell, the population of wasps and bees increases. 

There is even a tarantula burrow in one of the craters. But it is not just insects that inhabit these war-created apartments.

Mykola Hryhorovych kneels in another crater and peers into a black hole under charred branches. A fox has made its home here and recently gave birth to a litter. A few meters away, there should be another hole through which the animals can escape in emergencies. He looks out of the crater, scanning the surroundings, but can’t find the emergency exit. He sets off to search, overcoming obstacles—fallen and broken trees—but doesn’t find the desired passage. The foxes have hidden their escape route well, away from prying eyes.

Instead, Mykola Hryhorovych notices something else. Near the charred tree stump that was at the center of the explosion, crustose lichens are appearing. The farther from the explosion site, the more visible these plants become. This, he says, is a good sign—the air is becoming cleaner. In fact, there is an entire branch of science that evaluates environmental conditions based on crustose lichens—Lichenoindication . But there aren’t enough hands to engage in this work here, another consequence of the war.

How the Big is Captivated by the Small

“Look at the beautiful admiral flying!” — Oleksandr Volodymyrovych spotted a butterfly.

A man nearly two meters [~6.7 feet] tall studies small insects. Oleksandr Volodymyrovych has been working as an entomologist at Hetman Park for seven years. Together with his colleagues, he observed that three years before the full-scale invasion, butterflies migrated from Crimea to the forest-steppe here. The entomologist believes that global warming likely played a role.

Research on insects in the park also led to the discovery of new species. In 2014, a unique species of leaf-miner flies was found here—Ophiomyia adunca Guglya, named in honor of Kharkiv scientist Yuliya Guglya.

So, as soon as the city of Trostianets was liberated, Oleksandr Volodymyrovych hurried back to the fields—hoping there were new discoveries waiting to be made. He wrote to the military administration, asking for permission to use lights during nighttime research. He explained that it was necessary to monitor the insect population. Of course, one could chase insects with a net instead of using light, but Oleksandr Volodymyrovych wasn’t quite in shape for that anymore.

The military hesitated for a long time, as active fighting had ended only two months earlier. Eventually, they granted permission, chose a safe spot, and left the researchers for the whole night. That night, the forest near the village of Zhuravne was quiet, save for the buzzing of insects. They flocked to the lamp, and the scientist described every species he saw.

Before the war, there were five such expeditions a year, but now, a single one is considered a blessing. Many scientists have joined the military, and some are reluctant to venture into the field due to safety concerns. They say that even in the most remote areas of the park, near Poltava, there could still be explosives.

Saved by Ancient Oak Trees

Today, some former employees who now serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine visited the park. Among them was Oleksandr, who had been steadily climbing the career ladder since 2013 and, just before the full-scale war, held the position of a leading wildlife protection engineer. He used to catch poachers and conduct raids. But after February 24, 2022, his duties changed: instead of chasing poachers, he now had to chase russians through the forest.

In the first days of the full-scale invasion, Oleksandr evacuated his family to Poltava and returned to defend his home. He called his friends to meet and head into the city together. Trostianets had already been occupied, so the only way to get there was via forest paths not even locals always knew.

It was on these paths that Oleksandr and his friends encountered soldiers from the Kholodnyi Yar 93rd Brigade. They introduced themselves and agreed to show the brigade every passage into the city and the locations of the russians. They lived together in the ravines, planning surprise attacks on the invaders. However, the generals repeatedly postponed the assault.

During the day, the temperature hovered around 0°C [32°F], but at night, it dropped to -17°C [1.4°F]. The soldiers had no sleeping bags, and they couldn’t light fires. They sat freezing under ancient oaks with thick canopies. The russians bombarded them with shells, and many exploded in the branches. In a way, the park protected the soldiers.

Finally, on March 21, the assault began. The russians scattered in all directions, falling into classic hunting ambushes. That day, Oleksandr received seven shrapnel wounds and ended up in a hospital. After a few months, he recovered and fully mobilized into the army. Now, he beams with joy when he talks about shooting down Shahed UAVs at night, “We took down eight today.” 

However, the drones don’t always burn up in the air—they often fall into forests, where they start fires that can smolder for days, or even weeks.

Currently, smoke still rises from the area in Hetman Park where a Shahed drone crashed into the peatlands. Thick soil, fallen trees, and the stench of burning linger. The drone went down about two weeks ago. For the military, the priority is human life, and only after that comes nature. This particular Shahed could have reached its target—who knows what that might have been. Perhaps, an ordinary residential building or yet another hospital.

“The park will recover on its own, and we will help it,” says Oleksandr. “You can plant trees, and in 30 years they’ll grow—but it doesn’t work that way with human life.”

Life Has Changed

Before February 24, 2022, when Oleksandr was not yet a soldier, he often walked his dog in the park. His energetic dog would race through the forest for 40 minutes, rest, and then start running in circles again. Now, such activities are too dangerous. In the spring, after the de-occupation, many animals—foxes, hares, and dogs—were killed by tripwire mines. These days, Oleksandr’s dog sees only the confines of his own yard. “I don’t know where to walk my dog in Trostianets,” says the soldier. “The dog’s going to go mad in that kennel.”

The war has also affected the lives of wild animals—both birds and large mammals. Some have been forced to migrate to quieter areas, while others flee from the explosions even into human hands.

After the occupation, wolf tracks were spotted on the outskirts of Trostianets. Oleksandr suggests that the wolves likely migrated from the russian border or the Donetsk region, where intense fighting is currently raging. Previously, wolves were just occasional visitors to Hetman Park—passing through maybe once every two years.

Even on duty, the soldier has seen wild animals: several herds of wild boars ventured onto a mine-laden field. His colleague Maksym, who worked in the park’s tourism and ecology department before being mobilized, shared a story about encountering a lynx. He was stationed in the Chernihiv region with his brothers-in-arms, digging trenches, when suddenly a lynx strolled into their position and arrogantly laid down on a bench. The soldiers were scared, “Commander, should we shoot it? What if it jumps on one’s head—scary stuff.” Maksym wouldn’t allow it. The lynx thanked them for their humane decision by not harming either him or his subordinates. That was the end of the encounter.

“Animals are getting used to the explosions and are more at ease than before the war,” says Maksym. “This is because there are no poachers or hunters now.”

Nature adapts, despite everything, as long as it’s left in peace.

The head of the park’s protection service pulls out a gondola—or rather, an inflatable boat—and sets off on an inspection tour along the Vorskla River. The river has shallowed this year, and only the fry are racing about. Driftwood, submerged yesterday, now fascinates with its shapes on dry land. Still, some remain underwater. The somber man pushes through the trees and thorny branches, finally emerging into the “open sea.” The Vorskla remains silent and resting. It feels as though peace is possible, and life is slowly returning here. The nearest frontline is less than 100 kilometers [~62 miles] from Hetman Park.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

At least $600 billion is the estimated cost of damage to Ukraine’s protected areas and biodiversity caused by russia’s invasion, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources. However, the real loss far exceeds monetary value. It includes countless dead animals, devastated ecosystems, and stolen beloved places—places dear to each and every Ukrainian.

In this article, Ukrainian opinion leaders share their favorite places, which, because of russia, we have either lost or are losing right now.

Sasha Tab’s Crimea

“At Cape Aya near Sevastopol, I first saw bioluminescent plankton. We swam at night, and I couldn’t believe my eyes—my hands turned into some sort of neon light. These are incredible memories! Sadly, I haven’t seen this magical plankton again,” recalls Sasha Tab, vocalist of the band Kalush Orchestra.

Sasha was fortunate to visit Crimea several times in his youth, traveling to Yalta, Partenit, Koktebel, Hurzuf, Feodosia, and Kaihador (then known as Ordzonikidze).

The damage inflicted on Crimea’s unique nature by russians during the 10-year occupation is hard to assess. However, it’s known that military drills involving missile launches and bomb drops are conducted in the Opuk Nature Reserve. Additionally, illegal sand extraction has flooded about 10 hectares of the Bakalska Spit Regional Landscape Park. 

Many other russian crimes against nature likely remain undocumented, and we may only confront their consequences once Crimea is liberated.

“My best memories are about Crimea,” Sasha Tab says. “The younger guys in my band have never been there. That’s unfortunate. But I hope we’ll still have a chance to see these places.”

Nataliya Zhyzhchenko’s Chornobyl

“The last time I visited Chornobyl was April 26, 2021, at 1:23 a.m.—precisely on the anniversary of the disaster. I was there with the plant workers, and I brought my father. We visited the Shelter Structure and honored the memory of those who perished,” shares ONUKA lead singer Nataliya Zhyzhchenko.

From a young age, Nataliya was familiar with the details of the Chornobyl catastrophe because her father worked as a liquidator at the plant from 1986 to 1988.

“There’s history here, lessons to be learned, and sadly, they are repeating. Chornobyl has always been a source of pain for me, but also inspiration and awe.”

Nataliya has been to the Chornobyl zone about 20 times, doing internships at the power plant, filming documentaries, modeling for Vogue, and composing songs. As she puts it, Chornobyl allowed her to escape people and recharge.

After almost four decades of recovery, nature in the Chornobyl zone is once again under threat, this time from russia’s full-scale invasion. In 2022, Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate recorded elevated gamma radiation levels, likely caused by russian military vehicles stirring up radioactive dust.

“The nature there is unique,” says Nataliya. “The reserve is extraordinary because of the absence of humans and the environmental condition. When I was there, I saw a fox on the streets of Prypiat. I saw a moose and her calves when I stopped the car by the roadside. She looked directly into my eyes, assessed the situation, and simply walked away. Everyone [in the car] held their breath.”

The exclusion zone is home to many animals, including deer, roe deer, wolves, raccoons, wild boars, storks, lynxes, and bears. In total, over 300 species of vertebrates live in the area, 75 of which are listed in Ukraine’s Red Data Book of Ukraine.

“After all the harm humanity has inflicted on this area, it’s hard to imagine how else we could damage it. Nature will overcome this too. It will forgive this too. Unfortunately, but also, in a way, fortunately,” concludes Nataliya.

Anton Ptushkin’s Tuzly Lagoons

Blogger Anton Ptushkin’s memories of the Tuzly Lagoons are quite recent. In August 2022, he began filming a documentary there about animals during the full-scale war.

“We were filming the mass death of dolphins and cetaceans due to russian aggression,” Anton recounts. “I saw dead dolphins with my own eyes, lying on the shore.”

The Tuzly Lagoons, a group of saltwater lagoons [lymans in Ukrainian] in the southern Odesa region, are home to dozens of bird species, including some that are endangered. Despite the grim circumstances, Anton was struck by the beauty of the area. He was particularly amazed by the pelicans, noting he had never seen so many of them before.

This part of the Black Sea is also home to porpoises, one of the smallest cetacean species, including a unique subspecies known as the Azov porpoise [Phocoena phocoena relicta], which inhabits Ukrainian waters.

The natural park has been under enemy fire, with fragments of russian missiles found there. Anton was joined by a prosecutor investigating crimes against Ukraine’s ecosystem, who conducted autopsies on the animals to send samples to Germany and Italy to determine the cause of death.

“The park’s director, who has studied cetaceans for many years, believes that sonars and missile launches caused the mass deaths of dolphins,” Anton adds.

Anhelina Usanova’s Askania-Nova

“When I think of my time at Askania-Nova, I remember its peaceful atmosphere. But now, it’s far from a place of relaxation and connection with nature,” says Miss Eco International 2024 Anhelina Usanova.

She visited the reserve as a child during a nearby camp stay. She recalls reading about Przewalski’s horses and being determined to see them. Though she didn’t spot the horses, she saw many other exotic animals, including Caffra buffaloes, Chapman’s zebras, Père David’s deer, and American bison.

Today, these animals’ lives are in danger. We have previously reported on the fires in Askania-Nova, the largest occurring on August 22 and September 1, 2023. These fires destroyed plants listed in Ukraine’s Green Data Book. Since the start of the war, over 5,500 hectares of the reserve—nearly one-fifth of its territory—have burned.

Askania-Nova’s director, Viktor Shapoval, reported that three Caffra buffaloes died because the occupation administration failed to move them to winter quarters in time. Additionally, endangered species are illegally taken from the reserve to russia and Crimea, often to worse conditions where they lack the freedom they enjoyed in Askania-Nova.

A comprehensive assessment of the impact of russian occupation on the reserve’s ecosystem will only be possible after its liberation. After Ukraine’s victory, Anhelina plans to join a volunteer mission there.

“Our land will need a lot of work to restore everything, especially places as incredible as Askania-Nova. Its value cannot be measured in money, it is simply priceless,” she says.

Olha Martynovska’s Kinburn Spit 

“As a student, we used to vacation in Kobleve and Ochakiv, coastal towns near Mykolaiv. The Kinburn Spit was something like a foreign country for us, something exotic,” recalls Olha Martynovska, judge of the culinary show MasterChef.

One day, she and her classmates went to the spit that so “tenderly and delicately enters the open sea.” 

“After that, I had many foreign countries, islands, peninsulas, oceans, and seas, but this first one was like my first love. It stays forever, and the Kinburn Spit is a place of power for me.”

Now, Kinburn Spit is part of the russian-occupied territory, from which the mainland of Ukraine is regularly shelled. Fires frequently break out on the peninsula, and according to local residents, the invaders prohibit extinguishing them. Anticipating the advance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, russians have mined the spit, posing a threat to wildlife.

“When Ukraine liberates Kinburn Spit, I’ll go searching for the roe deer and hares I used to see there,” Olha shares her plans.

Polina Uvarova’s Kyianytsia

“I remember how in Kyianytsia, you could hear the birds’ songs so well that we would stop just to listen. Now, alongside the birds, KABs and Shaheds fly,” says travel blogger Polina Uvarova.

Kyianytsia is a small village in the Sumy region, just 30 kilometers from the russian border. Polina and her friends used to love visiting Kyianytsia to enjoy nature and tranquility.

“There’s a stunning architectural monument there—Kyianytsia Palace—and the nature is just incredibly beautiful,” she recalls.

The forest, with its many streams, abundant wildlife, and picturesque lake, is how Polina remembers this place. But now, due to constant shelling, locals no longer travel to Kyianytsia to unwind.

“After the victory, I’d love to return and walk the same paths. I’d look for the springs and stroll by the lake. I’d go to the local store, buy some coffee, sit by the lake with an ice cream, and just soak in the energy of this place,” she says.

Sasha Shabalina’s Dzharylhach

“Dzharylhach is a place that russia has stolen from me,” says comedian Sasha Shabalina. Dzharylhach Island is the largest island in Ukraine and the Black Sea. Sasha visited it in the summer of 2020. “YouTube convinced me to go to Dzharylhach: there were so many videos calling it the ‘Ukrainian Maldives.’ The videos showed crystal-clear water and wild animals.”

Sasha decided to go and was amazed by the natural beauty and the peacefulness of the wildlife. Right after arriving with her friends, they spotted a dolphin playing near the shore.

“There was this feeling that we were guests, and the true hosts—the animals—were nearby, so we had to behave respectfully. For the first time, I saw how people can show respect for both nature and each other.”

Since the beginning of the invasion, the russians have occupied Dzharylhach. Since then, the local ecosystem has been fighting for survival, as the russians are now using the island as a firing range. In August 2023, a fire raged on Dzharylhach for a week in the part of the island home to rare species. Endangered animals such as the steppe viper and the unique empusa fasciata, a type of praying mantis that can mimic a drop of water, were at risk from the flames.

Dzharylhach now faces the threat of being turned from a protected area into an industrial site and resort. In 2023, russian authorities permitted fishing, hunting, logging, and the extraction of clay, salt, oil, and natural gas. They also allowed the construction of hotels and restaurants in the national park. 

Additionally, the invaders built a land bridge between the mainland village of Lazurne and the island to facilitate access for military vehicles. Environmentalist and zoologist Pavlo Holdin explained that this artificial connection posed a threat to the Dzharylhach Bay ecosystem. Fortunately, the sea washed away the land bridge during a powerful storm.

“I think I would have removed that bridge with my own hands. It is ecocide,” Sasha Shabalina says in frustration. “I really want to believe that nature will heal itself. Since learning about the occupation of Dzharylhach, I’ve been dreaming of all the animals rising up to defeat the invaders, just like in the movie Jumanji.”

Cover Photo: Nataliya Zhyzhchenko in the Chornobyl Zone. Source: ONUKA archive and Vogue Ukraine.

Banner Photo: Animal autopsy in the Tuzly Lagoons. Source: Anton Ptushkin’s personal archive.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

We meet Leonid Myslyvets, the mayor of Oster, on the banks of the Desna, near the rescue station. He spreads a map of the community over the car hood to show the length of the riverbed—from the village of Bilyky in the north to Krekhaiv in the south, covering over 50 kilometers. Almost every day, rescuers go out on the water here to check if any dead fish have appeared along the shores.

Black Water

Oster lies on the Desna, halfway between Kyiv and Chernihiv. By car, it takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to reach from either city. Just south of the town is the Beremytske Nature Park, where green tourism had been promoted before the full-scale war. However, the russian invasion, followed by russia’s poisoning of the Seym and Desna rivers, significantly reduced the flow of visitors.

The pollution of the Seym in the Sumy region began around August 14, when the first reports of deteriorating water quality emerged. By September, it had reached the Chernihiv region. Social media was flooded with photos and videos showing hundreds, if not thousands, of dead fish along the riverbanks. There were fears that the contaminated water could even reach Kyiv.

From mid-August to mid-September, local authorities and volunteers in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions collected nearly 40 tons of dead fish.

“The poisoned water reached us on September 12. At that time, we set up two small aeration stations along the shore, and from them, we placed tubes into the water—one 40 meters long, the other 70. We punched holes in the tubes, following advice from the department [Desna Basin Water Resources Management],” Leonid explains. “The water is gradually getting oxygenated: our divers went down there and said that fish gather near the oxygen sources to survive.”

We head down to the pier, where we can hear a buzzing sound. These aren’t russian Shahed drones that fly along the Desna at night. Near the water, there are two small pumps, each providing a flow of 400–450 liters [100-120 gallons] per minute. Tubes extend from the pumps into the water, and from the middle of the river, you can see bubbles being carried along by the current.

“The water still isn’t bright and clear enough, but on September 13, let’s say, it was like tar, and there was a dark residue along the banks. Now there’s much less of it. But if the situation worsens, we’ll install more aeration stations—we’ve already arranged with local businesses to add four more of varying capacities,” the mayor of Oster states.

While chatting, we put on life vests brought by Oleksiy, a rescuer. He helps us settle into a boat, starts the engine, and steers us to the middle of the river. We speed upstream. Both banks are empty. Occasionally, a solitary gull soars above the water, or a kite circles high in the sky.

“Fortunately, it didn’t come to a fish die-off in Oster. There’s a key indicator—the level of dissolved oxygen in the water. The normal value is 7 milligrams per cubic decimeter or higher. Ours dropped to 5, and below 4, fish begins to die. Another indicator is chemical oxygen demand, also measured in milligrams per cubic decimeter. The normal level is around 30, but ours reached 50 or more. I know that upstream, it could reach more than 100,” Leonid explains.

A drop in the first indicator and an increase in the second shows that a chemical reaction is consuming oxygen from the water. When fish start dying, they begin to decompose, which also requires oxygen.

“If there’s a fish die-off, they need to be collected quickly. We were prepared for this and are still ready because we read reports of more pollution being dumped into the Seym. The rescue station has six boats and nets to retrieve the dead fish. Even some locals have offered to help. So, I hope we’re ready if it comes to that,” says Leonid.

We approach the boundary of the community along the river. No dead fish are visible along the shores. Currently, in Oster and throughout the Desna and Seym, there is a ban on using the water for any purpose, swimming or fishing. But this doesn’t stop the locals. As we moved upstream, we saw several fishermen: one casting from a boat and two others from the shore. When they noticed us, they pretended they were just relaxing and that the rods and reels weren’t theirs.

“What can you do about them?” Oleksiy chuckles. “Some people just don’t care about bans. I hope they don’t get poisoned. At least at the market, they try to control the sale of dead fish. But how do you control it on the river? Sure, we go out every day, travel upstream. But we can’t be going back and forth all day,” the rescuer complains.

Oleksiy steers our boat into an old part of the riverbed—the natural course of the Desna. The one we had traveled earlier was dug during Soviet times. The Desna, though navigable, was too winding, so they decided to dig a straighter course. During the fish die-off, the old channel became a refuge.

“The fish sought refuge in the old riverbed, these backwaters, to survive. The water here was cleaner—people noticed that. You won’t see it now, though, because the water quality has improved,” explains Oleksiy, peering into the water. “Oh, beaver dens. I hope we haven’t disturbed them too much because beavers are the real masters here,” he adds as we turn back into the newer river channel.

On our way back, we spot tourists with a tent on one of the banks. Leonid remarks that these are the first he’s seen since the river pollution began. Before the full-scale war, up to 300-500 cars would pass through Beremytske Park, that is, its parking lot, every day.

“Usually, from late May to October, people would come to the Desna for camping. In the Oster area alone, there could be as many as 5,000 visitors during the season. Now, the shore is empty. As soon as the news of river contamination broke, people stopped coming,” Leonid explains.

We dock at the shore. The aeration stations are humming. The rescuers tell us that they keep running even during power outages, thanks to a dedicated generator.

How They Dispose of the Fish

The village of Slabyn, located 60 kilometers from Oster, is part of the neighboring Honcharivka community. We meet with the local elder, Serhiy Kraskov, also near the Desna. He’s currently giving an interview to British journalists.

Even though we’re standing on the steep right bank, the wind still carries the heavy, cloying stench of decay from the water. As soon as we descend, the smell hits us with full force. Dark patches are visible on the water, and along the shore, there are black streaks left by residue. However, there are almost no dead fish on the shore—they were mostly collected the day before. Nevertheless, among the shoreline vegetation, some dead crucian carp can still be seen, and a pike about a meter long lies nearby.

“The banks here are overgrown, so a lot of dead fish got stuck there. On Sunday, September 15, we walked along the shore and pulled them out with nets. We had people from the village council, the cultural center, and the medical outpost helping. There were also a few volunteers with boats—they took care of the opposite shore. That day, we gathered almost one and a half tons,” Serhiy recalls.

Simply discarding or burying the collected fish isn’t an option: the decomposition products could contaminate the soil and groundwater. Therefore, a special burial site is needed—a deep pit lined with concrete wells with a concrete bottom. These burial sites are sealed with a similar concrete cover and placed far from water sources and residential areas.

“In our community, there’s still a burial pit left from Soviet times, but it hasn’t been used since the 1980s. I remember talking about it with Chernihiv [the State Environmental Inspectorate in the Chernihiv region] when the foul water reached them, and they were also gathering dead fish,” says Serhiy.

We head out to see this burial pit. It’s a few dozen kilometers of driving along rough field roads. As the car bounces over the bumps, Serhiy continues talking about the die-off: many large fish perished. The biggest one he saw was a catfish about a meter long. They collected bream, crucian carp, and zander, and the most numerous were pikes.

“I don’t know how all this will recover. If both the large and small fish have died, who will lay the eggs? Unless we artificially restock. Plus, maybe something will come down from the upper Desna, where the poisoned water didn’t reach. But even if that happens, who can guarantee that this won’t happen again in a year or two? russia isn’t going anywhere,” Serhiy says in frustration.

We cross the highway connecting Kyiv and Chernihiv and head into dense wooded plantations between fields. In one of these plantations, we stop and get out. From there, we continue on foot along a packed dirt road leading to a deep pit. The closer we get, the stronger the stench becomes. The pit is about four meters deep, roughly the same width, and about ten meters long. If it weren’t for the two concrete wells, it could easily pass for a dugout for armored vehicles.

“Since September 13, I’ve been dealing with this burial pit. We urgently ordered concrete rings from a local business to line the wells. It turned out that in the forty years since it was last used, the burial pit had completely grown over with trees. There was no access, so we had to cut down some of them. Now, we need to lay an asphalt road here,” says Serhiy.

We approach the wells. One is empty, while the other is nearly full of bags sprinkled with chlorine. Despite the concrete lining, puddles are starting to form at the bottom of the pit—a result of the decomposition of the dead fish. The buzzing of green flies, seemingly thousands of them, is unbearable.

“Since we’re a starostat [an administrative unit headed by a starosta—a village elder], bureaucracy moves slowly here: we can’t make quick payments, especially on a Friday evening. But I’m grateful to the local businessmen who delivered the first three concrete rings already on Saturday. And on Monday, September 16, they brought three more. It was all based on trust—they trusted that we’d pay them later. But we needed to bury the fish immediately,” Serhiy explains.

The community ordered a second well just in case, anticipating a larger die-off. However, by September 17, the number of dead fish had decreased, so it wasn’t needed for now.

The filled well will eventually be sealed with a concrete cover and buried. A fence and warning signs will be placed around the perimeter of the burial site so that locals won’t accidentally unearth it a decade or two from now.

New Pollution Incident

On September 17, Serhiy Zhuk, the head of the Environmental Inspection in the Chernihiv region, told UAnimals media that the situation in the rivers of the Chernihiv region had finally improved: “The fish are no longer dying. I can say this because I personally walked along the banks. We still find dead fish, but these are ones that died 3-5 days ago, surfacing from the bottom or from under the roots. Of course, the Seym and Desna waters are still unsafe for swimming. Almost all life there has perished, and an unpleasant odor persists. However, the levels of oxygen, ammonium, and iron are normalizing.”

The Chernihiv and Sumy regions are still calculating the damages, which are currently estimated to be around 450 million hryvnias.

This environmental crime has clear russian involvement. The Department of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of the Sumy Regional State Administration believes that wastewater from a sugar factory in the village of Tyotkino, in russia’s Kursk region, entered Ukrainian rivers. This conclusion was drawn after analyzing satellite images: they show that in early August, the wastewater accumulation basin at the factory was full, but by the second half of August (when reports of pollution in Ukrainian rivers emerged), it had emptied. Moreover, laboratory analysis of the water found substances “specific to sugar production.”

This is not the first time that russian activities have polluted Ukrainian rivers with wastewater. Oleksandr Yemets, a research associate at the Seymskiy Regional Landscape Park, recalled that this had happened at least twice before: in 2011, when an accident occurred at the treatment facilities in Kursk, and the dam near Tyotkino deliberately released polluted water into Ukraine, and again this year at the end of May. On those occasions, fish and crustaceans also perished. Each time, the incidents increased the risk of extinction for a unique species of the region, the Desman, which is on the Red List of endangered animals.

Unfortunately, this might not be the last such environmental crime. On September 16, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources reported further deterioration of water quality in the Seym. Samples taken in the village of Manukhivka (about three kilometers from the russian border) indicated a drop in oxygen levels. Once again, russia is the most likely source of this pollution. However, identifying the exact origin and cause of the contamination is difficult due to ongoing hostilities in the Kursk region, which borders Sumy.

As of September 25, polluted water reached Baturyn in the Chernihiv region. The dissolved oxygen level, as mentioned earlier, was less than one—ranging between 0.3 and 0.8 milligrams per cubic decimeter. In the Sumy region, between the villages of Mutyn and Ozarichi, the oxygen in the water was completely depleted. The next day, the situation in the Seym in the Chernihiv region worsened further.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection assures that this pollution incident is not as severe as the one in August, and the rivers should be able to recover more quickly. However, if a fish die-off occurs again, the border communities will once again have to collect the dead fish from the banks.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Russians are digging trenches in unique soils, planting explosives near endangered plants, conducting military drills in bird-nesting areas—they are committing environmental crimes in the Ukrainian nature reserve. Documenting each such incident is crucial to holding the invaders accountable.

Take this quiz to learn more about Ukraine’s protected areas and learn how to be aware and vigilant.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Cover photo: Nyzhniodniprovskyi National Nature Park. Photographer: Oleh Marchuk.

The Black and Azov Seas are home to three species of dolphins, each suffering in its own way due to russian aggression. What do we already know about how military actions affect them, and how can we help nature endure? Pavlo Holdin, a zoologist, ecologist, and expert on modern and extinct marine mammals, sheds light on these issues.

Currently, there are many conflicting reports regarding the number of dolphins killed since the full-scale invasion began. Some say 50,000, others mention 60,000 or more, while some believe these numbers are exaggerated. What do you think?

Any number mentioned right now—whether it is 10 dolphins or 100,000—has no scientific basis whatsoever. In 2019, Ukrainian researchers conducted an extensive aerial survey of the Black Sea. After the war, after our victory, we can fly again and cover all our waters, including those around Crimea. That will give us an idea of where dolphin populations have increased or decreased and how many remain in total, and then we can assess how many may have died. 

Until then, I believe it is premature to draw definitive conclusions. For now, the figures we [the Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Scientific Center of Ecology of Sea] provide relate to the bodies of animals found onshore. Of course, this assessment can and should be supplemented in the future with ecological modeling and extrapolated to estimate total losses.

So, what confirmed data do we have?

In 2022, more than 900 cases of dolphin deaths were recorded in the Black Sea region. This includes Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia. Naturally, this does not cover all the incidents, but it is a starting point for analysis and modeling. 

It is also important to note that we only work with verified photos and video recordings of deceased dolphins. Whenever we receive such materials, we verify them to ensure they are not fake, as media reports have sometimes falsely claimed sightings of dead dolphins that turned out to be from different locations or times.

Can I assume that such disinformation, especially if coming from russians, aims to undermine and discredit ecocide documentation efforts?

I do not know. But if we look at the official russian discourse, they try to downplay the scale of the deaths and claim nothing is happening, even when a dolphin carcass washes ashore in the center of Sevastopol.

There is a significant difference between their official and unofficial narratives. Their only similarity is that both are lies.

Can we identify an event or series of events that are most likely causing dolphin deaths?

The only cautious conclusion I can make is that the animals are dying for various reasons. It is unlikely we’ll find that all the deaths stem from a single cause. 

To draw an analogy, though it may seem imperfect, let us look at how war affects people. There are direct life-threatening factors, such as bombardment with various weapons. But people also die from heart attacks, strokes, or from not receiving timely medical care, lacking clean water, or from increased infection rates. 

When forensic pathologists examine the deceased, they find various causes of death, but investigators and prosecutors may conclude that the root cause is war.

The same applies to wildlife, including dolphins. There are multiple threats to their lives and health. Missile launches from surface and underwater naval vessels, whether successful or not, pose a danger. A failed missile that crashes into the sea contaminates the dolphins’ environment with rocket fuel. Even a missile that was successfully launched underwater exposes the animals to harmful noise. Speaking of noise pollution, another source is russian radar systems, which also harm marine mammals. Thus, due to the war, animals are suffering from both acoustic trauma and chemical pollution.

Stress is another threat to the animals. And it is not just the dolphins that are stressed; the fish they feed on are too. To put it simply, the fish get scared and move away, and the dolphins follow. This migration into unfamiliar conditions increases the risk of them getting caught in fishing nets.

There is also speculation that dolphins can suffer from concussions even far from combat zones. A recent article in Science suggested that mild concussions might be a possible cause of whale strandings around the world. While we need technologically complex studies to confirm this, it is not something we can rule out as being connected to the war.

The destruction of sewage systems or larger-scale events, such as the russian military’s destruction of the Kakhovka dam, is also dangerous for dolphins. These incidents release large amounts of organic matter into the sea—from agricultural fertilizers to sewage from cities. This raises the risk of infectious diseases and provides the conditions for phenomena like “red tides,” massive algal blooms. Some of these algae release toxins into the sea.

If a dolphin washes ashore in Bulgaria or Georgia, for example, can this also be linked to the war?

Biological and veterinary analyses are needed to confirm that. When we study what is happening to dolphins in the Black Sea, we must consider everything, because there are no state borders for animals. The impact might occur within our economic zone, say, halfway between Snake Island and Crimea, but the aftermath could manifest in Bulgaria or Turkey.

Then, it is important to establish cooperation with other countries to jointly assess the effects of the war on marine animals. Is such cooperation in place, and how does it work?

Yes, cooperation has been established. Colleagues in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia perform autopsies on dead dolphins, conduct laboratory analyses, and share their data and findings with us. 

However, as in Ukraine, the capabilities for such research are limited in all Black Sea countries: no government funds autopsies or analyses. Scientists carry out these studies only when they can and out of their own initiative. 

Considering that dolphin bodies decompose quickly, very few are suitable for autopsy. As a result, the data we receive is quite scarce.

As far as I know, dolphins are at the top of the food chain. How does their death affect the Black Sea ecosystem?

Yes, dolphins are at the top of the food web. We use the term “web” because it is not a single chain but a network of interconnected chains. 

Dolphins are considered keystone species, meaning that top predators like them stabilize entire ecosystems. In the Black Sea, dolphins regulate fish populations, and in turn, fish control the populations of zooplankton, phytoplankton, crustaceans, etc.

So, if dolphins are absent (or too few), fish begin reproducing uncontrollably. When there are too many fish, they deplete zooplankton, and that leads to the unchecked growth of microalgae. The toxins from these algae can kill both zooplankton and fish. In the end, we end up with a sea overrun by algae where little else can survive. 

Moreover, when dolphins die out, their place is often taken by jellyfish or, even worse, comb jellies. There have been cases in history where the mass death of dolphins led to ecological disasters.

In the 80s and 90s, up to 90% of Black Sea dolphins perished. This was caused by the dolphin hunting industry, which thrived until 1983. Around the same time, a species of comb jelly, Mnemiopsis, entered the Black Sea through ballast water. With no competition, it multiplied rapidly—an aggressive spread of an alien species is known scientifically as a bioinvasion. As a result, in the 1990s, Mnemiopsis consumed the eggs of almost all common fish species, and anchovy catches dropped 100 to 200 times by 1991. It was even said the Black Sea could become a dead one.

Ironically, the dolphin population recovered partly due to another bioinvasion, an accidental one at that. In 1997–1999, another species of comb jelly, Beroe, was introduced into the Black Sea, and it fed on Mnemiopsis.

In your opinion, how difficult will it be to restore the dolphin population after the war?

Ukraine is home to various dolphin populations. We have three species: the harbor porpoise, the common dolphin, and the bottlenose dolphin. Each species has its own life cycle, lifespan, reproduction rate, and so forth.

As of now, the common dolphin, is doing relatively well. This species is mostly found in the open sea and stays away from the coast.

On the other hand, the harbor porpoise suffers greatly due to human activity. Although no one hunts it intentionally, it often gets accidentally caught in fishing nets. Each year, 12,000–16,000 porpoises die this way, one of the highest rates in the world. Due to this constant pressure, porpoises reproduce quickly: females give birth almost every year and reach sexual maturity at just three years of age, or perhaps even earlier now.

In contrast, the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin reproduces much more slowly, giving birth only once every three years, and reaching sexual maturity at 5–6 years, sometimes even later. This species is listed as endangered and is the largest dolphin in our waters with the smallest population.

Bottlenose dolphins are divided into several local groups. Some groups can be large, numbering in the hundreds, while others are much smaller. For example, near Dzharylhach Island, between 2016 and 2020, we studied a group of fewer than 50 bottlenose dolphins.

Bottlenose dolphins have strong cultural traditions and sophisticated social relationships—they are highly attached to their home territory. If some russian soldiers were to shoot them near Dzharylhach, the dolphins would simply disappear from that area, leaving it desolate for decades.

Therefore, even if we assume that the overall dolphin population in the Black Sea recovers, it does not mean that each small group of bottlenose dolphins will survive. It is entirely possible that while things may look fine in the center of the sea, the situation near the shores—particularly near our shores—will be much worse. And it is crucial to understand this: the bottlenose dolphin population cannot be replenished in captivity. Second-generation offspring simply do not get born in captivity.

Thus, bottlenose dolphins are the most at risk, especially in peripheral areas where fighting occurs, and even in areas without direct combat.

What non-combat measures negatively affect them?

The russians are distorting nature. They do not just destroy dams—they build new ones, and that is bad.

They constructed a causeway between Dzharylhach Island and the occupied mainland of Ukraine. Fortunately, nature took care of it: in 2023, a massive storm washed it away. But that causeway posed a threat to the Dzharylhach Bay ecosystem by blocking the water exchange with the open sea.

As for the Kerch Bridge, it does not just threaten nature—it has already caused harm. 

Firstly, its construction generated severe acoustic pollution, harmful to dolphins.

Secondly, there is now a dam between Tuzla Island and the Caucasian shore, damaging the ecosystem of the Taman Bay and the Kerch Strait, where small herds of bottlenose dolphins live. It also endangers the entire ecosystem of the Sea of Azov, home to a unique population of harbor porpoises.

What can Ukraine do to protect Black Sea marine mammals? How can we at least reduce our own negative impact on them?

Scientists propose three main areas of work, which align with the international convention that came into force in Ukraine back in 2003.

• The first is to reduce accidental dolphin deaths. We can learn from the experience of Romania and Bulgaria, where special devices are installed on fishing nets to deter harbor porpoises.
• The second is to expand the network of protected areas. This requires political will since it requires legislative changes. It is crucial to start this process now, even during the war, and especially to create these protected marine areas in Crimean waters.
• The third area is to strengthen government control over pollution sources—biological, chemical, and acoustic. This is not about punishment but about systemic recommendations. In other words, experts should be present to say, “Do not operate here right now because fish are coming,” or “This area is clear for operations.”

Will the abolition of dolphinariums affect the dolphin population? 

It will, and significantly. We do not have large herds of bottlenose dolphins like in the Pacific, where they number in the thousands. Our groups are small, each with its own routes and feeding grounds. When a dolphinarium poacher catches five bottlenose dolphins, it can have fatal consequences for the entire group.

For our country, dolphinariums are evil. Public pressure is key here—going to dolphinariums should become bad taste.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Main photo: NGL media. Photographer: Maxym Kozmenko

In early May, a forest in the Chornobyl Biosphere Reserve became the scene of another tragic incident. Border guards heard an explosion near their post. When they deployed a drone equipped with a thermal camera, the image it captured was heartbreaking: a rare Przewalski’s horse, listed as an endangered species, had triggered a landmine.

This year, Ukraine’s Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources stated that our country is the most heavily mined in the world. Forests, meadows, and waterways in the east, north, and south of Ukraine are not only littered with mines planted by the invaders; Ukrainian forces have also laid explosives to defend the borders.

Mines in Nature Parks 

Serhiy Kubrakov, director of the Desna-Stara Huta National Nature Park, periodically visits the ruined Desnyanka camp. There, he photographs an unexploded Grad MLRS rocket. “This rocket has been lying on the porch of one building for a year and a half,” says Kubrakov. “Fishermen have also reported unexploded Grad [rockets] stuck in the riverbank. This is what we’ve found. Who knows how much more is out there, embedded in the ground?”

A map reveals the extent of the danger: red zones mark areas that are mined or potentially dangerous, while yellow indicates possible mine contamination. 

Many nature parks and reserves fall within these red zones. In the Sumy region, for example, national parks like Desna-Stara Huta, Hetman National Park, and Trostianets, along with the regional Seymskiy Park, are affected. In Kharkiv Oblast, the Dvorichna National Nature Park is also under threat.

The State Emergency Service of Ukraine notes that natural areas, regardless of their ecological value, are demined last. In liberated territories, deminers prioritize areas where people live first, followed by roads and critical infrastructure. Only afterward do they move on to agricultural land and, finally, forests, meadows, and water bodies.

Even if deminers were ready to begin clearing natural areas today, most of these places are accessible only to the military. Fighting continues in many forests and near river floodplains, making humanitarian demining impossible under fire.

The Desna-Stara Huta park stretches along the state border with the Russian terrorist state. It includes the floodplains of the Desna River, which are partially accessible to park employees. However, the Stara Huta forests along the border are heavily mined by both Ukrainian and Russian forces.

“There have been incidents where our border guards nearly triggered anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Enemy sabotage groups frequently enter the area, setting up booby traps and planting anti-personnel mines,” Kubrakov explains.

The park is littered with not only mines but also unexploded ordnance. While there is no official prohibition from emergency services, Kubrakov warns, “You can head in any direction, but it’s a one-way trip. Besides the mines, there are also Russian saboteurs. Last year, they shot at a milk truck and killed 10 people, including pensioners.”

Another park in the Sumy region, Seymskiy, is constantly shelled from the Russian side of the border, and its riverbanks are reportedly heavily mined.

Dvorichna Park on the Oskil River in the Kharkiv region, adjacent to the border, currently lies in an active combat zone. “We have no access to the area; it’s constantly under fire. The extent of the mining is unknown,” said park employees.

The first park close to the front lines where demining has begun is Holy Mountains in the Donetsk region. Almost the entire territory was liberated in October. After demining, park management plans to plow firebreaks—strips of land cleared of brush and other flammable materials. This will help prevent forest fires caused by shelling.

Forests near the Belarusian border are partially accessible to park staff and visitors, but they, too, are heavily mined. Blueberry and mushroom pickers are warned by special signs, although some have tried to use them as firewood or even as stakes for their tomato plants. Nevertheless, most foragers stay clear of the dangerous areas.

Do Animals Trigger Mines?

“These incidents are not uncommon, though they don’t happen daily. Since the death of the Przewalski’s horse, we haven’t recorded any similar cases,” says Yuriy Shakhraychuk, a press officer with the 9th Border Detachment.

In February of this year, near Makariv in the Kyiv region, a moose triggered a booby trap. A similar incident occurred in May in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, where a female moose was killed by a mine, and her calf, despite the efforts to save it, also died.

“In 2022, we spent a week working with combat engineers near Bakhmut,” recalls an infantryman from the 30th Brigade who wished to remain anonymous. “The combat engineers were setting up tripwires throughout that time. Every night, some animal would trigger them. It could be a fox, a boar, or a hare. We were expecting an enemy advance, but by the time they attacked, almost all the tripwires had been triggered.”

However, documented cases of animals triggering mines are few, as it’s challenging to confirm what exactly happens in remote, mine-filled forests. “I’m always in touch with the military. They report that sometimes in the forest, where there are certainly no people, isolated explosions can be heard. It’s highly likely that wild animals are triggering these tripwires. No one would dare investigate an explosion in the middle of the forest, as it could cost them their life,” explains Serhiy Kubrakov, director of the Desna-Stara Huta Park.

Before the full-scale invasion, the park was home to bears, lynxes, capercaillies, numerous moose, and even occasional bison and deer. Whether these animals still inhabit the forests is unknown, says Kubrakov: “The entire territory needs to be surveyed. We don’t know how the fighting has affected animal populations, including rare species. Once we regain even limited access to these areas, such as along cleared paths, we can start drawing conclusions.”

Mines pose a threat not only in forests but also in water. From March 2022 to July this year, 68 carcasses of Black Sea cetaceans were found in the Tuzly Lagoons, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The likely causes of death include bombings and underwater mines. If the animals didn’t die immediately, they succumbed later from their injuries.

What Types of Mines Threaten Animals and When?

“The corpses of animals with limb or torso injuries are a telltale sign of a minefield, something all soldiers are trained to recognize,” says Yuriy, known by his call sign Ram.

Yuriy is a professional soldier. Although he’s not a combat engineer by training, he has learned just about everything about mine safety. He became an instructor in this field with the Ukrainian Legion, a civil society organization that has been teaching basic military skills since 2014. He explains the dangers that mines pose to living creatures in forests, meadows, rivers, and seas.

Not every animal that touches a mine or unexploded ordnance will cause an explosion. If a mine is pressure-sensitive, the outcome depends on the animal’s weight and whether it is walking or running. Each mine has an activation force (or sensitivity) measured in kilograms. For example, if a mine’s sensitivity is 5 kilograms, something weighing that much or more must press on it to trigger an explosion.

Pressure-Sensitive Mines

Yuriy shows pictures of deadly “tin cans” on his rugged military laptop. The international Ottawa Convention, which Ukraine has signed, prohibits our forces from laying anti-personnel mines. Russia is not a signatory to the convention.

Some of the most common anti-personnel mines laid by Russians in Ukrainian fields and forests are PMN and PMN-2, with sensitivity ranges of 8–25 kilograms. PMN-4 mines, with a sensitivity of 5–15 kilograms, are also frequently encountered. These mines pose a danger to many wild mammals, except the very smallest: hares (4–10 kg), foxes (3–14 kg), wolves (45–60 kg), wild boars (60–200 kg), roe deer (20–37 kg), and moose (360–600 kg). These mines can be dangerous for years before they are defused.

“Butterfly” mines (PFM) are used along the entire frontline. They are launched in large numbers from special dispensers and scatter randomly on the ground. Spotting a mine of this type is difficult: they are small, made of plastic, and even those who deploy them don’t know exactly where they land. While these mines usually don’t kill, they can cause severe bleeding and suffering. Their activation force ranges from 5 to 25 kilograms.

Anti-vehicle mines, which detonate under pressure, have higher sensitivity thresholds: the TM-57 mine requires 200 kilograms to activate, while the TM-62 series is triggered at as low as 120 kilograms. Some of these mines are cylindrical, while others resemble tin cans, similar to anti-personnel mines.

Anti-vehicle mines pose a threat to larger animals. “You won’t find these mines in dense forests, but they might be placed on clearings or roads,” says Yuriy. “If a moose decides to take a well-trodden path instead of trudging through the underbrush, it could be fatal.” These mines can also be set in steppe areas—anywhere without bogs or steep slopes.

Mines with seismic, magnetic, and infrared sensors are also used. These theoretically respond only to vehicles.

Mines with Tripwires

A tripwire is a wire or fishing line that connects a detonator to a tripwire-activated mine. Anyone who triggers the wire causes an immediate explosion. The tripwire can be set at a low level, where it might catch a crawling hedgehog or at shoulder height for a human. Any animal that exerts enough force to trigger the tripwire will most likely be killed.

Russians frequently use the OZM-72 mine, another elongated “can.” It is buried in the ground, with the detonator connected to a tripwire. This mine has a sensitivity of 500 grams. If an animal or person touches the tripwire, the mine jumps out of the ground, explodes in the air, and strikes the victim with shrapnel.

The most sensitive mine commonly encountered is the POM-2. These mines are deployed through remote mining systems, which scatter them across the ground. A tin can with explosives lands on the ground, with four tripwire darts falling around it. “They scatter chaotically; one might land on a tree, another on a flower, and one could just lie on the ground. You stumble on it, pull the wire with a force of 350 grams… Even a hedgehog can do that,” Yuriy explains. This mine has a self-destruct mechanism that should activate no later than 100 hours after deployment.

Mines in the Water

Anti-landing mines (YaRM) are grayish cans hidden beneath the water’s surface. They are equipped with a cross-shaped sensor, also submerged. There is little to no chance of spotting one. The trigger force for these mines is 600 grams. Mines like these can be found in the Dnipro River and its tributaries in the Kherson region, “The explosion causes a powerful hydrodynamic shock, killing many fish.”

Another danger in coastal areas or shallow waters is the PDM-1M mine. It is a semi-sphere with a rod that is usually covered by water. If the rod is displaced with a force of 18 kilograms or more, the mine will explode. “Over time, these mines can break free from their anchors and drift out to sea after a storm. The destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant sent many mines into the Black Sea, where they drifted towards Turkey and Odesa. If a mine breaks loose, it will float like a buoy until it hits something. That could be a dolphin or a person who brushes against it with their hand or an oar.” At a few meters’ distance, the mine will kill anything nearby, while those farther away may suffer concussions.

Why You Shouldn’t Go Mushroom Picking in Former Combat Zones

“‘I won’t go mushroom picking in the forest,’ is an old combat engineer’s favorite saying,” Yuriy quips darkly. Until deminers provide a qualified assessment that an area is clear, entering it is off-limits, he warns. “There could be countless tripwires… Some might have been disarmed by the military, but others could have been missed. A mine might be buried in the ground, camouflaged by turf, grass, or branches, making it impossible to detect without special equipment. Plus, a soldier carries two tourniquets with them. But a mushroom picker goes with just a knife and a basket… If this person triggers a mine, they could bleed out in the forest. The phone might not work, there’s no tourniquet—and then what?”

While animals can trigger tripwires or set off anti-personnel mines, the primary danger mines pose is to humans, “If a mine is lying under the snow, a hedgehog might crawl over it without issue. But a person, thinking they can follow the tracks—’a hedgehog passed here, so can I’—will be in danger. The hedgehog weighs a kilogram, but a person weighs 80.”

There are also mines that can explode just by a person approaching them, like the POM-3 mine with a seismic sensor. For this mine to detonate, one doesn’t need to step on it or trigger a tripwire. The seismic sensor detects the vibrations from a person’s steps and activates the detonator.

When Will We Be Mine-Free?

Let’s take a look at the map again and find the Falkland Islands in the Atlantic. For two and a half months in 1982, a war raged between Britain and Argentina over control of these islands. The intensity of combat was lower than in Ukraine, and the Falklands’ area is almost 50 times smaller than Ukraine’s. Yet it wasn’t until 2020 that the UK officially declared the islands fully demined—38 years later.

Some mines self-destruct after a certain period. Those without a self-destruct mechanism will remain a hazard for years, “These things can stay in a ready-to-kill state for decades. Metal and plastic can take years to decompose. Even if something is done incorrectly and water leaks inside, it won’t affect the mine’s lethality,” says Yuriy.

When will it be safe to go mushroom picking across all of Ukraine? 

Predictions after the first year of the war estimated hundreds of years. As new technologies and vehicles have been acquired and more demining operators have begun working in Ukraine, those hundreds of years have been reduced to decades.

According to calculations by James Cowan, CEO of the Halo Trust is a charitable organization that performs humanitarian demining. HALO Trust, one day of fighting in Ukraine equates to a month of demining. So, for now, we are at least 75 years away from being able to pick mushrooms safely in the Stara Huta forest.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

“It was the end of the day, the sun was setting. Luckily, we were rowing: leisurely paddling along. Suddenly, we saw it sitting there! It was gnawing on something on the water lilies. It noticed us, too — the contact lasted about 5 seconds. Then it immediately dived and hid under the lilies.”

Zoologist Oleksandr Yemets, a researcher at the Seymskiy Regional Landscape Park, has been studying the desman for many years. He has seen it in the wild only once in his life, and he says he was incredibly lucky.

The animal is so rare that all possible conservation documents protect it. In the Red Data Book, it has the status of a relict species at risk of extinction.

Moreover, the desman is very cautious. Upon sensing an intruder, it will dive to the bottom, sealing its snout with special valves. Then, it might even relocate from the area where it was disturbed.

The problem is that in modern conditions, the desman is disturbed everywhere — and in Ukraine, it is almost extinct. The only population of desmans remains in the The Seym is the largest tributary of the Desna. In Ukraine, the river flows in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions.Seym and its two tributaries.

Now, this area has become a battleground: explosions can constantly be heard in the once-quiet backwaters. So, does the desman still live near the Seym, and what do we know about it? We discuss this as part of the #StopEcocideUkraine project.

The Russian Desman — The Oldest Representative of Modern European Fauna

The desman is a small mammal that spends much time in the water. Its lifestyle is similar to that of a muskrat, but by origin, the animals are not closely related. The desman is related to the mole. In the Talpidae family, which includes moles, there is a genus called Desmana. A single species of this genus still survives, the Russian desman, scientific name Desmana moschata. Once, there were many species of desmans, but we know this only from fossil remains.

The oldest remains of these animals, found in Europe, date back to the Miocene. This was an epoch in Earth’s history that began about 23 million years ago and ended about 5 million years ago. The animal world was quite different then. The desman lived alongside the ancestors of horses, rhinos, and immense mastodons. Humans as a species did not yet exist!

Therefore, the desman is a relict animal that has survived into modern fauna from pre-human epochs and is not well adapted to current conditions. It evolved into its present form 20 million years ago and has not changed since. Why change anything? 

It’s just perfect! Its four-sided snout is equipped with skin valves to prevent water from entering when it dives. It can comfortably stay underwater for four minutes. The snout is also convenient for digging in the mud at the bottom in search of food.

The desman’s eyesight is weak but quite sufficient for its lifestyle. It swims in dark thickets and is active at night. 

Its body is small, about 20 centimeters (~8 inches) long, with a similarly long tail covered in scales. At the base, it is round, but towards the end, it becomes flat like a boat keel, which is useful for swimming. The desman has developed webbing between its toes for better swimming. There are also fringes of fur along the edges of its paws that increase the surface area for paddling.

The desman’s toes on its hind legs are arranged quite differently from other mammals, being column-like — one above the other. This is not very convenient for crawling but excellent for paddling. Its fur is thick and silky, allowing it to stay relatively dry and creating an air cushion around it. Is this not perfect for aquatic life?

The desman favors An oxbow lake forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off.oxbow lakes, floodplain lakes, and even settles in river channels. The entrance to its burrow is underwater, but the burrow itself extends into the bank, rising above the water level. A desman family can dig tunnels up to 20 meters long, sometimes on multiple levels, in case the lower floors flood. The burrow is lined with plant matter.

The desman is not picky in terms of food: its diet includes both plants and animals. This includes mollusks, cattails, water lilies, insect larvae, leeches, and in winter, fish. During Soviet times, when desmans were kept in artificial conditions, they even agreed to eat cabbage and potatoes.

A Fragrant Animal

The largest populations of desman live on russian territory in the basins of the Volga, Don, and Ural rivers.

The English name — Russian desman — reflects this fact.  

At the same time, the name of this mammal, used in the Ukrainian scientific community, is not “Russian” but “that of Rus.” This name refers to the medieval Eastern Slavic state Kyivan Rus, which existed on the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and partly russia. Throughout the centuries, variations of its name have been used by those claiming the inheritance of Kyivan Rus. Finally, in the 18th century, russia formally adopted this name. Both adjectives—which refer to the old Slavic state and to the modern country—are often mixed up in russian and even English.

Ironically, while called “Russian” in English, it is precisely the russians who are currently pushing desmans closer to extinction. 

In Latin, however, scent played a significant role. The genus name Desmana was adopted, meaning “musk.” The species name moschata also means “with a musky smell.”

Yes, the desman truly has a scent. Its glands secrete musk, which serves as a chemical signal to attract the opposite sex and lubricate its fur. This substance, whether of animal origin or synthetic, is used in perfumery, as musk is believed to induce arousal.

However, the desman itself is quite reserved in this regard — during the breeding season, it is monogamous! It creates a family and dwells only with its partner.

The Last Sighting of the Desman

In 2009 researchers estimated that about 300–500 desmans remained near the Seym and its tributaries. However, these figures are just an estimate: no thorough studies of the Seym’s desman population have been conducted.

Apart from Ukraine, there are small populations of Russian desmans in russia and western Kazakhstan. Although the desman once lived in the rivers of Western Europe, it is no longer found there. What led to its extinction there?

Hunting, among other factors, played a role. Recorded figures on desman hunting in russia show that 100,000 skins were sold annually before World War I.

The desman began to die out. During Soviet times, efforts were made to restore the population: The animal was caught and kept in artificial conditions, and various rafts made of brushwood and floating nest boxes from logs were even made for them. Then, they were released into rivers. From 1929 to 1940, desmans were also released in Ukraine, but they did not take root anywhere.

In Ukraine, the desman lived in the Dnipro River but went extinct in the 1930s.

It also lived in the Siverskyi Donets and its tributaries. The rare animal had a protected status as far back as 1928: in the Luhansk region, a “
“desman farm” called Kreminne was established in the floodplain lakes of the Krasna River. In modern terms, this was a nature reserve. Initially, the population increased, then fell back to its original numbers. The reserve was abolished in 1954 and turned into hunting grounds. Since then, desmans have occasionally been spotted in the Donets but gradually disappeared. It is believed that by the 1970s, the species was completely extinct in this river.

However, around the time when the desman nearly disappeared in the Donets, it appeared in the Seym. This was an artificially introduced population that, surprisingly, settled in well. The desman was released in the Kursk region in 1961 and found the Seym to its liking. The river originates in russia, flows through Ukraine, and empties into the Desna. The desman gradually spread downstream, inhabiting the Ukrainian part of the Seym in the Sumy region. The areas where the desman can live are now part of the Serednioseymskiy Reserve and Seymskiy Regional Landscape Park.

“The information we have about the Seym comes from recorded catches: people simply report that this animal was seen. There are photographs of desmans in the Seym tributary, the Vyr River — there was definitely a small population there,” says researcher Oleksandr Yemets.

Oleksandr himself encountered a desman in the Kleven River. This happened near the village of Lytvynovychi in the Konotop district on August 6, 2018. The zoologists were not expecting a desman at the time; they were out for a bird survey.

It seems this was the last recorded instance of a desman sighting in Ukraine.

Why There Are So Few Desmans

The animal is extremely particular about its living conditions. As soon as something doesn’t suit it, it leaves. If only it had somewhere to go…

Both natural and human factors threaten the desman. It is uncertain whether the animal will survive the new challenge — hostilities. So, what is endangering the desman?

• Climate Change

The desman is poorly adapted to temperature changes and may not survive droughts. 

Additionally, the animal spreads during river floods, which have been absent in recent years. “Its burrows get flooded, so it abandons them and follows the stream in search of new territories,” explains Oleksandr Yemets. “At such times, you might see a desman on some log or just floating in the water. The animal needs somewhere to sleep and eat, but its burrow is flooded! So, it leaves home. This is how it disperses. Have you seen the Seym flood? It’s an incredible sight: a sea of water under the spring sun, beautiful! Unfortunately, the last flood was about 20 years ago.”

• Agriculture

The desman is disturbed by the presence of people and livestock and gets frightened by sounds.

• Fishing

On the Siverskyi Donets, fishing contributed to the disappearance of the Russian desman. The animals got caught in nets, and people frequently visited the river with cars or used electric fishing rods, scaring or killing the animals.

• Wastewater

“During my years working in the Seymskiy Park, there have been two serious environmental disasters. Both were linked to russia,” laments Oleksandr Yemets.

On June 27, 2011, an accident occurred at the sewage treatment facilities in the russian city of Kursk. Wastewater is typically purified using activated sludge: a whole ecosystem of microorganisms that feed on substances in the wastewater, “cleaning” the water. At the Kursk treatment plant, these microorganisms died and failed to do their job. The untreated waste flowed into the Seym, reaching Ukraine.

“When this mass of poisoned water approached the dam near Tyotkino is a town in russia near the Ukrainian border.Tyotkino, instead of dealing with it on their territory, they opened the sluice gate and released the water into Ukraine. As a result, a colossal number of fish died here. The Ukrainian lamprey, a species of fish-like organisms that are protected by everything imaginable, was affected!” he exclaims.

The second major pollution incident occurred this year at the end of May. Once again, dirty water flowed from the north, killing fish.

Moreover, in 2012, at least four enterprises in russia were fined for discharging untreated wastewater into the Seym, and in 2023, the water utility company of Kursk, Kurskvodokanal, was fined for insufficiently treating the water that entered the river.

“Dirty water is a catastrophic situation!” Yemets laments. The water’s bacterial balance changes and the amount of dissolved oxygen drops sharply. This kills mollusks, reducing the desman’s food supply.

• War

Oleksandr Yemets predicts that the war will have the most significant impact on the desman population in the Vyr River.

The animals live in the river near the villages of Stari Vyrky, Novi Vyrky, Boyary-Lezhache, and Ryzhivka. “Right now, it’s hell there. All you can name is being fired there and exploding there. Nothing remains of poor Ryzhivka! And the desman was spotted near Ryzhivka, and it must still be living somewhere around there,” says Yemets.

It doesn’t necessarily take a direct hit to harm the desman population. Any animal flees areas where it is disturbed by noise and vibration. When a shockwave from an explosion hits water, aquatic organisms suffer from hydrodynamic shock. Simply put, they get shell-shocked. “If this happens regularly, it’s catastrophic for the animal. And this has been going on regularly for two years. The desman is a very cautious animal! It won’t stay where cows graze near the water. Just mere cows! And here, it’s shells!” 

Explosions not only make noise but also pollute the water, soil, and air, contaminating them with heavy metals.

Could the animal simply relocate downstream? It needs suitable living conditions, which are increasingly scarce. And it’s not just the war playing a role: sometimes farmers against the law plow fields right up to the Seym and other water bodies, which doesn’t suit the desman. Yemets concludes, “Where it used to live is now under bombardment. So it will definitely leave, but whether it will find a new place is a big question. The climate has changed significantly, the oxbow lakes have dried up. So the desman will look for A backwater is a place flooded by river or lake water during a flood, or a calm area of a river or lake. backwaters directly in the Seym. However, there aren’t many places that meet its living requirements.” 

How the Desman is Studied and Counted

Detecting the desman in the summer is difficult because the animal is nocturnal and lives among water plants and duckweed. Therefore, they are counted in the winter.

The method is as follows: when the water first freezes and the ice is clear, scientists walk on it and look down under the ice. They search for evidence of desmans. “Where there are burrows, there will be a trodden path — you can see that it uses this burrow,” explains Oleksandr. “Usually, shells gather near such burrows: the desman eats, throws out the shells while sitting in the burrow.”

The last serious studies were conducted in the Siverskyi Donets basin in 2001, but no desmans were found.

“We wanted to count the animals in the landscape park. However, organizing such an expedition is not easy. It’s very expensive and requires equipment. And now there’s a war,” laments Oleksandr.

In recent years, there have been at least a few recorded instances of desman sightings in the Seym. Now no one, except the military, can enter her habitat as the area is under frequent shelling.

The State Emergency Service of Ukraine prohibits researchers from traveling by boat or kayak on water bodies; the shores may be mined.

Only nature conservation inspectors have the right to check the condition of the landscape park. They report that there are almost no nets now, which is good. However, no one knows if the desman still lives in the Seym. 

Can the Desman Be Saved?

Until the hostilities in the Sumy region end, it is too early to talk about preserving the desman. Oleksandr Yemets says, “This is the highlight, the trump card of our landscape park. This is an animal from past epochs! If the russians leave our land, we will conduct research. Then, it will be clear what can be done to preserve the population. And the situation will improve. We must preserve this unique animal, which remains here only in the Sumy region.”

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Since 2014, Ukrainian nature reserves have been turned into battlegrounds or ended up under military occupation. For example, russia seized the Kazantyp and Yalta reserves after occupying Crimea. The Holy Mountains National Nature Park, the Donetsk Ridge and Zuyivskyi landscape parks, and parts of the Luhansk Provallia Steppe Nature Reserve were damaged or completely destroyed during the fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

With the start of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, reserves in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions also came under occupation. The occupation authorities there are employing the practices already mastered in Crimea.

Within the framework of the #StopEcocideUkraine project, we discuss the ecocidal actions committed by russians on Ukraine’s occupied nature reserve lands.

THE GOAL IS TO SEIZE NATURAL WEALTH AND USE IT FOR FURTHER MILITARY AGGRESSION

russians exploit Ukraine’s protected areas wherever they can establish even a temporary foothold. They try to make this temporary presence permanent by legalizing their actions, at least within the framework of russian legislation.

Re-registration

After the occupation of Crimea, the russian state register saw an increase in legal entities, including national parks and reserves located on the Crimean peninsula. russians began re-registering them as property of their state. Thus, December 2014 saw the appearance of the Kazantyp Nature Reserve, the Tarkhankut National Nature Park, the Opuk Nature Reserve, and other “state budget institutions”.

However, from 2017 to 2023, the russian legal entities of the Kazantyp, Karadag, Opuk, Tarkhankut, and Karalar reserves were liquidated. No, the russians did not regret their conquest or acknowledge their crimes — they simply decided to centralize the management of protected areas through a single directorate, Zapovednyi Krym (Protected Crimea). This entity was created back in 2020, and its activities include fishing and logging. Thus, what is essentially a scheme with the creation of a parent organization legalized these operations on Ukrainian protected territories.

Another criminal activity concerning animals and a way of making money is carried out by the Karadag Nature Reserve in temporarily occupied Crimea. There, russians created a “science demonstration program” involving dolphins. Every day except Monday, visitors are treated to a “bright and colorful acquaintance with Black Sea bottlenose dolphins” — a rare species listed in Ukraine’s Red Book. Judging by the poster, an institution dedicated to studying and preserving nature instead entertains the public with shows similar to those at Nemo dolphinariums.

During the full-scale war, russians apply their experience of appropriation and destruction to mainland reserves under occupation. For instance, last year, the Ukrainian Dzharylhach National Nature Park (Dzharylhachsky in the russified version) was included in the russian unified state register of legal entities. According to this register, russians have allowed fishing and hunting, logging, and the extraction of clay, salt, oil, and natural gas on the territory of the national park. They also want to turn the protected area into a recreational zone by building hotels and restaurants.

In March 2023, russia also included the state-owned autonomous institution Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve in its state register. The russians omitted an important part of the reserve’s name — the name of Friedrich von Falz-Fein, who founded it. The occupation administration of the Kherson Region appointed a former employee of the Security Service of Ukraine, Dmytro Meshcheriakov, as the reserve’s director. The National Police has already made him a collaborationism suspect for this.

The same situation occurred in the Azov-Syvash National Nature Park in the Kherson Region. It was re-registered under russian law in February 2023, with Ukrainian citizen Yevheniy Popovchuk appointed as director. Evidently, he harbors political ambitions under the russian occupation regime, as he ran as a candidate from the United russia party in the illegal elections held in Kherson in 2023, becoming a deputy of the so-called Henichesk Municipal District of the Kherson Region.

Military Exploitation

However, re-registration and russian conservation status do not protect the occupied reserves: russians use these lands for military purposes, endangering and deliberately destroying them. 

russians have set up a military training ground in the Pryazovskyi National Nature Park in the Zaporizhzhia Region. There, they conduct mortar fire drills, damaging the reserve landscapes with shelling. Last year, they also actively excavated the Molochna River to create a water barrier in case of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

According to the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, at the beginning of the full-scale war, russians also entrenched themselves in the south of the Donetsk Region, in the Meotyda National Nature Park. This destroyed the nesting sites of wetland birds: the Pallas’s gull, oystercatcher, Dalmatian pelican, and Sandwich tern. Ornithologist Vadym Zhulenko explained that these birds nest only in that location.

The consequences of the occupation of protected areas can already be assessed by the condition of those that have been liberated. For example, after the de-occupation of the Kamianska Sich National Nature Park in the Kherson Region, experts discovered the barbaric method russians used to camouflage their military positions. The invaders tore up rare feather grass species and other plants, which the park was created to protect.

Moreover, let us also take a closer look at the Holy Mountains National Nature Park in the Donetsk Region, which was under occupation from February to autumn 2022. According to its director, Serhiy Pryimachuk, during these months, russians destroyed about 5,000 hectares of forest and removed equipment belonging to the park. The protected area was heavily mined, and mine explosions continue to cause fires.

A similar story unfolded in Dvorichansky National Nature Park, occupied in spring 2022. When the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated the Kharkiv Region in the autumn, russians had mined the park area, including with anti-personnel mines known as “petals” [PFM-1 anti-personnel land mine]. Demining is not possible at the moment — it can only be done after the fighting is over. The park is too close to the russian border.

METHODS — BURNING PLANTS, STEALING AND SHOOTING ANIMALS

Regional military administrations monitor the condition of occupied biosphere reserves and national nature parks using satellite imagery and maintaining contact with employees who were forced to remain under occupation. They report that these territories suffer most from fires: forests and steppe grasses burn. Consequently, animals suffer from starvation as well as die from mines and shelling. They also get killed by russian poachers and stolen from Ukrainian reserves to russian zoos.

Nature in Flames

According to the Kherson Regional Military Administration, over 5.5 thousand hectares of the Askania-Nova reserve have burned since February 24, 2022—almost one-fifth of its territory. Agricultural landscapes were most affected: arable land, fallow fields, and shelterbelts. The administration explains this by neglect: weeds have grown, which quickly dry out and are susceptible to catching fire.

However, protected zones also suffered from fires, including the “model” fescue-feather-grass steppe of the Black Sea region, the main ecological asset of Askania-Nova. The most significant damage was caused by large fires on August 22 and September 1, 2023. Plants listed in the The Green Data Book of Ukraine is a government document that promotes the protection of entire plant groups.Green Data Book of Ukraine (2009), primarily Ukrainian feather grass [Stipa ucrainica] and downy feather grass [Stipa capillata], were burned. Additionally, during the firefighting on September 1, 2023, russians plowed the virgin steppe in the reserve, damaging the soil.

Partially affected by the fires was the bottom of the Great Chapelsky Hollow [also referred to as the Great Chapelsky Lowland], a wetland of international importance protected by the Ramsar Convention. The entire reserve area is part of Ukraine's Emerald Network is a network of areas of special conservation interest that is part of the Emerald Network of Europe.Ukraine’s Emerald Network.

In 2023, the Dzharylhach National Nature Park experienced 36 fires which burned over 1.5 thousand hectares of protected land. Rare Red Data Book orchids, sawgrass, and other valuable plants used to grow there. Deer, fallow deer, foxes, and gray hares had to flee the fires. The damage to the park is estimated at over 102 billion hryvnias [~2.5 billion US dollars].

From February 2022 to April 2023, over 7 thousand hectares of protected lands in the Lower Dnipro National Nature Park burned. In June, when russia blew up the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station, the park was completely flooded. The damage to the plants cannot be determined since most of the park’s territory remains under military occupation.

In the Mykolaiv Region, the Kinburn Spit, located in the Ivory Coast of Sviatoslav National Nature Park, regularly suffers from fires due to russian military actions. Over the two years of full-scale war, park employees recorded more than 200 fires on the occupied territory. The fire often reignites in the same area, affecting over 6 thousand hectares of the reserve.

The Luhansk Regional Military Administration reported that eight forest fire sites caused by active hostilities in the region have been identified since 2022. These fires have damaged parts of the Kreminna Forests National Nature Park and the Triokhizbenskyi Steppe Reserve branch of the Luhansk Nature Reserve.

After de-occupation, the Holy Mountains National Nature Park in the Donetsk Region still suffers from russian shelling. Constant fires from attacks prevent the forest from recovering. The fires also cause significant damage: on May 7, 2024, over 470 hectares of forest burned, with the State Environmental Inspection estimating the damage at over 2.6 billion hryvnias. This assessment had to be conducted remotely, relying on firefighter reports and geospatial data, as the park’s territory is mined.

Explosives pollute the soil, hindering plant growth and generally negatively impacting flora restoration. “I know from 2014 — when Grads [MLRS] shelled a plot of land in the forestry — that for 8 years, not even grass grew there,” says Serhiy Pryimachuk, director of the Holy Mountains Park, about the war’s consequences for nature.

Animal Deaths and Injuries

On Ukrainian conservation lands under occupation, animals die due to inadequate care and suffer injuries and stress due to hostilities. 

Viktor Shapoval, director of Askania-Nova, reports that many animals in the reserve die from a lack of proper care. For instance, in November 2023, three Cape buffaloes, warmth-loving African animals, died on the territory of the Great Chapelsky Hollow because the occupation administration did not move them to winter quarters in time. Another female buffalo died on the way there.

The Kherson Regional Military Administration estimates the losses to the Askania-Nova reserve from animal deaths and removals at 970 thousand hryvnias [~24,000 US dollars]. This is not the final amount, as the damage continues to be calculated, however, it won’t bring the animals back.

In the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, in the Pryazovskyi National Nature Park, russian invaders and local collaborationists engage in fish poaching. According to the park’s director, Dmytro Volovyk, they have placed at least 8 kilometers of fishing nets in the Molochnyi Estuary Hydrological Reserve, collecting up to 5 tons of fish daily.

He also confirms that in the Azov-Syvash National Nature Park, the invaders kill animals “for meat”, “Animals from Biryuchyi [Island] are shot and transported in trucks. I know of an incident where the invaders shot a truckful of hooved animals, with blood dripping from the car trunk.”

There are also reports from occupied parts of the Kherson Region that russian soldiers hunt there. The animal killers do not hide their actions and post photos of their prey on social media. Zoologist Vitaliy Smahol identified a male red deer in these photos. Before the war, herds of these deer used to live in the Askania-Nova reserve and the Azov-Syvash National Nature Park.

Theft of Red Data Book Animals

russians illegally transport animals from Askania-Nova, disguising their actions with a “cooperation agreement,” but these documents are signed not by the legitimate Ukrainian director but by the russian appointee.

In 2023, the National Resistance Center reported that russians were taking animals to the Safari-Park in Krasnodar. The park has a petting zoo, and the animals are kept in enclosures, which are very different conditions from Askania-Nova, where the animals roamed freely.

In December of the same year, the russians illegally exchanged several specimens of Chapman’s zebra, American bison, Przewalski’s horse, and Père David’s deer from Askania-Nova for eland antelopes, domestic yaks, and Bactrian camels from the Rostov Nature Reserve. The species taken from Ukrainian territories are listed in the Red Book and included in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List with statuses such as Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, and Near Threatened.

russian propaganda media also report “exchanges” between Askania-Nova and the Tayhan Park in Crimea. In the spring, a 15-year-old pregnant Chapman’s zebra and two foals of this species were taken from Ukraine to Crimea. In return, pelicans, dwarf pigs, alpacas, and a Eurasian bustard were taken from the park in the occupied Crimea. Tayhan has a bad reputation even in russia: its director Oleg Zubkov is often accused of animal abuse. He himself states that he has gone through 582 court sessions involving 70 administrative and six criminal cases. Animal rights activists say he is protected by the occupation authorities of the peninsula. They also sent a petition to vladimir putin, citing the Tayhan Park as “a parody of a zoo, an amateur zoo garden without any animal professionals, with daily dangerous situations caused by the reckless actions of the park owner Zubkov.”

Moreover, the same Oleg Zubkov owns another animal abuse facility—the Skazka Zoo. russian Red Data Book animals — Bengal tiger cubs — have already died there. Now, the zoo has signed a criminal agreement with the occupation management of Askania-Nova to obtain Ukrainian Red Data Book animals.

By managing temporarily occupied Ukrainian reserves, russia exploits loopholes in international law. For instance, the Rome Statute still lacks a definition of ecocide as a crime, and the Geneva Convention does not specifically protect reserves and sanctuaries. While there is a 2016 UN General Assembly resolution on the environment that calls on member states to protect the environment during armed conflicts, UN resolutions are not binding, and thus russia has not included environmental protection requirements in its military documents.

Therefore, Ukraine must vigorously advocate for changes in international law that would hold russia accountable for the damage to Ukrainian protected territories and the environment in general.

Cover photo: Kreminna Forests, 2024. Source: Open Forest NGO

Bottom banner photo by Roksolana Baran. Source: Nature Reserve Fund of Ukraine

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

20% of Ukraine’s protected areas have suffered due to the war. Some territories—valuable ecosystems, wetlands ravaged by tanks, and burned forests in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that have been devastated by the russians since 2014—are lost forever. However, in most cases, nature has the ability to heal itself without the need for any extra conditions. The key is not to interfere.

Our common task is to assess the environmental damage caused by the fighting and hold the invader accountable with a fair bill.

In the early months of the war, we asked ourselves, “What’s next?” We cannot always stop a missile that burns forests, destroys land, and pollutes soil and water. Clearly, such incidents will continue. What can be done about it?

We studied the history of wars and reparations. The most recent case we looked into was the Iraq-Kuwait war. In that instance, 10% of the reparations were designated as environmental. However, these mostly concerned losses of natural resources—how much natural gas was burned, how many mineral deposits were destroyed, and so on. We became curious as to why there was no accounting for biodiversity loss—plants, animals, and other living organisms. History has shown that there was no proper recording of environmental crimes nor a method for calculating them. This is why we are starting from scratch.

There are several critical steps necessary to document the damage and hold russia accountable.

First, we need to monitor and catalog Ukraine’s biodiversity meticulously. Currently, we largely rely on outdated methods, but with the help of our Finnish colleagues, we are modernizing our approach. This is one of the key reforms required for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.

Specifically, we aim to implement satellite monitoring that will allow us to track each animal rather than estimating numbers based on sightings and plugging those figures into a formula.

Second, it is crucial to document the environmental crimes that have already occurred thoroughly. Since the first days of the full-scale invasion, the State Environmental Inspectorate has been recording each crime with on-site inspections, when possible, along with photographs and all necessary evidence. The collected data is being uploaded to the EcoZagroza — official resource of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine. You can find more information here: https://ecozagroza.gov.ua/enEkoZahroza app, which any Ukrainian can contribute to.

The approaches used by the State Environmental Inspectorate are much broader than those employed by law enforcement when investigating criminal liability. There is a stark difference between proving a crime and evaluating the damage done. For instance, how can we calculate the value of a tree that has been growing for 80 years?

However, it is important to note that a full accounting of the damages will only be possible after demining efforts are completed—currently, more than 25% of Ukrainian territory is mined and in need of inspection.

In February, Ukrainian prosecutors officially notified russian military personnel of their suspected involvement in committing ecocide in Ukraine for the first time. Holding russia accountable as a whole, however, is a matter of international law. On April 2, the Register of Damage for Ukraine, which includes an environmental component, came into effect, with over 40 countries supporting the creation of this “international tribunal.”

As we continue to gather evidence of russia’s crimes against the environment, we must also address institutional changes within Ukraine. One of the most critical steps is to draft and pass a law on state climate policy, something Ukraine has lacked thus far. This policy would enable the launch of an emissions trading system similar to that in EU countries. Additionally, we have supported the European Commission’s initiative to increase the share of renewable energy to 2030. Ukraine has unique territories, such as the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, where green energy projects can be developed on unused land, gradually turning Ukraine into an energy hub.

We are already shaping the future of Ukraine’s economy and the country’s ability to recover after the war. These issues cannot be postponed. Therefore, we must implement European standards for the use of natural resources while meticulously documenting everything for which russia will have to pay soon.

The texts in the Columns section reflect only the author’s opinion and do not necessarily align with the position of UAnimals media’s editorial team.

Once known as the Grand Meadow, the ancient Ukrainian steppe, the area has become the bed of the Kakhovka Reservoir by Soviet engineers who built a dam. The recent act of ecocide by the russians, who blew up the dam, has been studied under the #StopEcocideUkraine project to understand how nature is recovering.

Seventy years ago, the floodplains, meadows, and steppes in the south of Ukraine were teeming with life, flourishing with wild vegetation, abuzz with birds, and home to various fish and reptiles. Between 1955 and 1958, Soviet engineers flooded this area to create the Kakhovka Reservoir, submerging a fascinating and diverse landscape that decayed under the water for decades. This stagnant water bloomed with cyanobacteria.

Despite the degradation, over 65 years, the Kakhovka Reservoir developed important A biotope is an area of land or a part of a body of water with a homogeneous relief and a range of living organisms inhabiting it.biotopes, mainly colonies of waterfowl.  

Additionally, a water supply system was built around the reservoir, providing fresh water to southern Ukraine.

In June of last year, the Kakhovka Reservoir drained due to the dam’s destruction by russian forces, exposing approximately 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles) — an area the size of 250,000 football fields. 

This raised concerns about the freshwater supply for parts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, and even Dnipropetrovsk regions.

The government plans to restore the reservoir. According to a government decree, during the war and for five years after, the Kakhovka area can only be used for restoring the reservoir and constructing hydraulic facilities. 

However, some ecologists argue this is a flawed idea, suggesting that a more valuable biodiversity area could develop in place of the stagnant water body.

In any case, realistically, reconstruction is impossible as long as most of the reservoir’s left bank remains occupied by hostile forces. Currently, nature is the sole designer and builder of the former reservoir bed.

Dnipro Floodplains. Photo by Viktor Petrochenko

Science Under Fire 

“It was just mountains of trash. We called them ‘horkulents.’ Whatever the russians ate, they threw away, plus they stole various items from the village: carpets, chairs, and tables. It was all lying out in the open,” recounts botanist Ivan Moisiyenko, co-founder of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, about his first trip to the reservoir shore. He arrived at the Kamianska Sich National Nature Park three weeks after Kherson’s liberation — on December 1, 2022.

The national park removed the trash, but trenches and dugouts left by the invaders still remain: for over a month, that territory was a battlefield.

Subsequent trips by the botanist to the now-former reservoir were not without danger, “My colleague and I were accompanied by park staff because the area was heavily mined: you need to know where to walk. The first time, we traveled along the Kherson-Beryslav-Marianske road (over the former reservoir). At the checkpoint, we were warned of the threat of FPV drone attacks. The next time, this road was already closed because FPV drones had been attacking civilian cars. We had to take a long detour.”

The very act of researching the area is highly risky. Being on the former reservoir’s territory means being within reach of russian artillery. Additionally, any movement could trigger a reaction from enemy strike drones.

“Research can be cut short very quickly — just as you’re starting,” says Vasyl Kostiushyn, a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Zoology.

This is how scientists study insects. Photo provided by Oleksiy Vasyliuk

Botanists at least have the chance to study the vegetation at the former shore’s edge or use aerial photography. Zoologists, however, need to venture deeper into the territory. Completing most tasks quickly is not feasible, explains ecologist Oleksiy Vasyliuk, head of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, “To study land animals, you need to set up special zoological traps of various types and inspect them every half hour. For a complete picture, insect studies are necessary. Different species fly at different times, so such expeditions need to be conducted multiple times. Many insects are nocturnal, and to learn about them, you need to set up powerful spotlights and use them for several nights.”

To observe large mammals, camera traps are placed along their paths, which first need to be located. “There is no information about the current state of the reservoir’s fauna. It’s unknown if zoological research can be conducted before full de-occupation,” adds Oleksiy Vasyliuk.

So, what have researchers managed to discover in the year following the catastrophe?

The Grand Meadow is Not Really a Meadow

The area filled by the reservoir in the 1950s is historically called the Grand Meadow (Velykyi Luh). Be careful, though, as the name can be misleading. Before the flooding, this area comprised not only meadows but also a network of channels, lakes, swamps, floodplain forests, and steppe fragments.

Oleksiy Valysiuk explains that, until the 1950s, this was the number one area in Ukraine for biodiversity, “Looking at the relief of this territory, one can assert that it housed the most diverse and dynamic landscape in Ukraine. It played a crucial role in global seasonal bird migrations. Since the 1920s, scientific and state institutions had been striving to create a nature reserve here.”

The Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, after studying satellite images, concluded that there is hope for the restoration of the channels and floodplains. The relief under the water’s surface hasn’t leveled out; it still retains the depressions of former floodplains and swamps.

Satellite image taken on July 15, 2023. Source Wikimedia Commons

Already, the Kamianka River, which had been buried under stagnant water for 65 years, is flowing through the area.

However, it is futile to hope that nature will regenerate exactly as it was before the reservoir, says biologist Vasyl Kostiushyn. “All the distributaries and floodplains form when the river is alive, meaning there are annual floods. But now the Dnipro’s course is almost nowhere natural: it’s entirely regulated by reservoirs. We can’t know if there will be floods,” explains the scientist.

He doubts that the Dnipro will be allowed to return to its natural course. Canals used to branch off from the Kakhovka Reservoir, supplying water to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, the Kryvyi Rih district, and, in the past, Crimea. Additionally, groundwater was connected to the reservoir. Part of the water from this reservoir reached wells, as the natural groundwater is brackish and unsuitable for drinking.

“Biological diversity is unlikely to be a priority. I hope the government will agree to at least an intermediate solution,” says Vasyl Kostiushyn.

The Institute of Hydrobiology has proposed such a solution: they want to separate the shallow northeastern part of the river from the reservoir with a dam. If this dam also regulates the water level, it could simulate a flood, explains the biologist. This would create meadow and floodplain biotopes: it wouldn’t be exactly what existed before the Kakhovka Reservoir was created, but it would resemble the previous landscapes of the Grand Meadow.

Floodplain with water lilies. Source: Grand Meadow National Nature Park

Vasyl Kostiushyn suggests, “I think this area will be a mix of open biotopes and sections overgrown with shrubs and new forests. Without water, it could become a desert.” On the bottom of the former reservoir, a whole tapestry of ecosystems could appear. What it will be like entirely depends on the water level.

The Victorious Willow and Valuable Steppe

The former reservoir bed has turned green with willows. This both surprised and pleased botanists: they feared it would become overgrown with alien species. The willow grew on the silt. But the willow shoots will still struggle for survival — over time, the thickets will thin out in this struggle.

Additionally, in the areas accessible to researchers, the petrophilous (rocky) steppe should have been restored — a valuable site for biodiversity not only in Ukraine but in Europe as well. Therefore, botanical expeditions studied the limestoneRock outcrops are bare, exposed rocks that are older than those that cover them. outcrops

on the slopes of the ravines. The steppe was slow to regrow, says Ivan Moisiyenko: 

“My theory is this. The steppe areas that exist now were separated from the reservoir by willow thickets, reeds, and shrubs. The steppes that existed before the reservoir and are now exposed are isolated from other steppe areas. The seeds of steppe species did not reach that limestone. We started looking for a place where the steppe almost reached the water. And we found it.”

There, researchers found about 10 steppe species. For example, they added the toadflax (Linaria macroura) to the herbarium. Ivan Moisiyenko says, “I believe the steppe will restore itself on the outcrops that were the reservoir’s bottom. But it will take some time for the seeds to reach them.”

Fans of the Current

In the final years of the Kakhovka Reservoir’s existence, about 46 fish species were recorded there, explains ichthyologist Yuliya Kutsokon. The reservoir was home to common roach, common bream, silver carp, and Black Sea sprat. However, the dominant species was the Prussian carp, “It made up about 70% of the entire catch. This is an invasive fish species,” says Yuliya. This carp, by the way, is not demanding in terms of water quality and can live in silted waters with low oxygen content. Most of its neighbors were also foreign to the Dnipro, artificially reproduced for fisheries.

Before the reservoir was built, the fish fauna in this section of the Dnipro was richer and more diverse, with around 60 species: beluga sturgeon, Russian sturgeon, Pontic shad, Vimba vimba, Black Sea roach, common nase, Alburnus sarmaticus, blue bream, white-eye bream, gudgeon, Dnipro barbel, weatherfish, burbot, Donets ruffe, and European flounder. In the reservoir, these species either disappeared or their numbers decreased so drastically that no one had seen them for many years.

“If this section becomes a river again, it will definitely have a positive impact from a conservation perspective,” says Yuliya Kutsokon. Then, populations of rheophilic fish — those that love currents — might have a chance to appear.

For instance, a current is needed for the spawning of sabrefish, says Yuliia: “Sabrefish needs a large river. Its eggs develop in the water column but must have a current; otherwise, the eggs settle and die.” Sabrefish is included in international conservation lists.

Additionally, species that migrated from the sea to the river could gradually reappear if any remain either in the lower Dnipro or its tributaries. “Desna, for example, is a powerful place for preserving many rheophilic populations. It has an interesting fish, the common nase. The Sluch has the Dnipro barbel — now an extremely rare fish listed in the Red Data Book. Perhaps something will return here as well.”

Among mammals, beavers and river otters, which still live below the former reservoir, may come to the floodplains.

And What About the Land?

The animal world will depend on the tapestry of biotopes that form. Open water and shallow areas will attract waterfowl, says Vasyl Kostiushyn. If it is dry, the area will host larks and wheatears; if there are bushes, warblers and various passeriformes will appear; if forests develop, thrushes, woodpeckers, and birds of prey will settle there.

“Foxes might already be exploring these areas. The wild boar — an undemanding animal — uses everything from reed ponds to ancient forests,” says the biologist.

What the fauna of the Grand Meadow was like before the flooding is not precisely known, says Oleksiy Vasyliuk, “There is no paper that properly describes this area, nor is there any living zoologist who remembers the territory before the flooding.”

The Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group hopes to organize zoological expeditions as soon as it becomes possible. They promise to publish more detailed studies about the state of the animal world on the bottom of the former reservoir and the prospects for the Grand Meadow.

Main photo: Kamianska Sich National Nature Park in August 2023. Vegetation on part of the riverbed. Photo by Serhiy Skoryk

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

On June 5, 2023, at 8 p.m., hydrometeorological center workers measured the water level of the Dnipro River at 532 centimeters (209 inches) above the datum level of the Kherson stream gauging station*. 

This was a normal water level for early June.

Approximately six hours later, the invading troops blew up the dam of the Kakhovka Reservoir on the left bank of the Dnipro. Villages and towns downstream began to flood. 

A year after the dam’s destruction, eyewitness accounts have more or less settled into coherent stories. Just ask, and they flow like the water that burst through the destroyed dam. Witnesses recall the flood: they saved themselves and rescued those who were helpless from the muddy water.

June 6

Natalia from Oleshky 

It was half past four in the morning. I heard my son talking to someone on the phone. Then I heard the sound of him running. I realized something had happened. He came rushing in and said, “Mom, they called from Kherson, they say the Kakhovka HPP has been blown up.” My God!

We were at home in Oleshky. My father was 94 years old. He was immobile, so we couldn’t leave. No one believed this could happen. We decided to move to the second floor of a neighbor’s house. They had left in 2022, and we were looking after their dog, a German shepherd named Archik. So we moved everything there, dismantled my father’s bed. We wrapped him in a sheet, and my son carried him like in a sack while I helped him. That’s how we got to the second floor. And the water was coming in at an incredible rate…

Oksana from Kherson

At five in the morning, my son called from Canada, “Mom, what’s happening? We all know about the explosion.”

At first, the water was rising slowly. First, it was ankle-deep, then knee-deep. People were panicking and didn’t want to leave their homes. No one believed the water would reach the rooftops.

8 a.m. — 660 cm (259 inches) above datum level

Hanna from Mykolaiv 

I remember that morning like it was yesterday. I am a fitness coach, and sometimes people call me even in the middle of the night. So, I decided to take a break and turned off my phone. I woke up to a million calls. What’s going on? A volunteer friend from Kherson called, “Hanna, the flooding has started.” We left for Kherson.

Katia from Kyiv 

In the morning, I was told over the phone that the UAnimals evacuation team was leaving for Kherson in 30 minutes. I threw a warm sweater and a bunch of gadgets into my backpack. I forgot my toothbrush, though.

The situation was new, and no one knew how to handle a boat. Even if we got one, what would we do with it? Everyone was so scared.

Alisiya from Kyiv

People immediately started asking if the Kyiv Animal Rescue Group (KARG) would go to evacuate animals from Kherson. Of course, we decided to go. But we needed an extra boat, chemical protection suits, waders. The whole day was a rush and hustle. We finally left in the evening, the car packed to the brim.

3 p.m. — 796 cm (313 inches) above datum level 

Hanna from Mykolaiv

When it all had just begun, we didn’t see the big flood — perhaps a puddle. We were walking around with an animal catcher, leisurely collecting dogs. Then another driver of mine called me, “Get here immediately!! The entire Ostriv is flooded!”

Our eyes were as big as saucers because we had packed the car full of cages with dogs by then. We started heading in that direction — and realized there was nowhere to go! We were literally floating. In front of us, soldiers in a jeep were cutting through the waves, and we were “rowing” along with them.

I prayed the car wouldn’t stall at that moment. As soon as we made it out, the soldiers ran up to us, “Are you volunteers? Take the animals!” So we added a cat, a tomcat, kittens, and a German shepherd. And that’s how we headed to Mykolaiv.

Natalia from Oleshky

We have the Chaika River flowing nearby. People rushed to the shore to see if the water would reach us. When the river started to overflow, they ran back to their homes.

We had two German shepherds with us: our neighbor’s Archik and our Luna. We had to get them to the second floor as well. They didn’t want to go and were scared. While we were getting them up, Archik bit my husband. It was impossible to go through the door; we set up a ladder and passed the dogs through the balcony. They even jumped from the second floor into the water. Oh, the way we caught them! Archik jumped when the water was knee-deep, and my husband and daughter caught him wading through the water. The next day, Luna jumped, and my son caught her already from a boat.

The russians themselves were in shock, running away! People said many of them drowned.

Two russians floated past us on an inflatable mattress, both with rifles. They moored to a fence, one took a puppy from a yard, ripped off half a slate sheet from the roof, and continued paddling with that piece of slate.

The russians had been taking boats from people, not just before the flood but probably two months before it. So, we dragged our boats behind the houses and hid them using greenhouses. We dumped grass and sand and then covered them with rails. From above — with drones flying around like crazy —  it must have looked like a pile of firewood.

And thank God we did that. When the water was above our knees, we dismantled the rubble and prepared the boats. 

7 p.m. — 867 cm (341 inches) above datum level  

By sunset, the water had already covered the fences.

June 7

7 a.m. — 1025 cm (403 inches) above datum level

Katia from Kyiv

We arrived in Kherson with the UAnimals evacuation team. As soon as you step out of the car, you hear powerful explosions. If you’ve come from Kyiv, the contrast is immediately apparent. It seemed like I could hear an explosion every five minutes.

Alisiya from Kyiv

The first animal we rescued was a little mouse clinging to a bush. It was sitting on a twig in the middle of the water; I took it and handed it to a volunteer. The mouse was weak and needed to be nursed back to health.

A temporary animal shelter was specially opened in Kherson for this mission, where several organizations, including ours, brought animals.

The phone was constantly ringing, people were sending addresses and asking for help. We created a rough plan for the day from these addresses, but finding those places was difficult: house numbers were underwater, the navigator was inaccurate… But we did the most rescuing while looking for those addresses. There was barking from somewhere, meowing from another direction, chickens clucking, roosters crowing, and you couldn’t leave anyone behind!

3 p.m. — 1048 cm above datum level 

Hanna from Mykolaiv

We were heading towards Chaikovskoho Street. We waded knee-deep into the water, but then it got too deep to continue. We started collecting dogs, grabbing them, and putting them in carriers. Then some boys ran up, “Help our friend!” A young man around 20 years old with cerebral palsy came out. He was struggling to walk, falling, and getting back up. He had two German shepherds with him. He cried, not wanting to part with them, but his home was flooding. We took the dogs from him, and he promised to come back for them later. The water kept rising, and we retreated further, rescuing animals from the water.

That day, we saved the most famous dog. Do you remember the photo of a German shepherd hugging the leg of its rescuer? We named her Bahira. We were evacuating Bahira from Kherson.

Photographer — Danylo Pavlov / Reporters

Oksana from Kherson

We went into the water up to our necks, hurting our arms and legs. Whenever a cat or dog surfaced, we pulled them out of the water. There were ordinary people, and we didn’t even ask their names. People were dragging their belongings, volunteers were ferrying elderly people, dogs, chickens, and goats on boats.

Rostyslav from Kherson

I took two young women from the Mykolaiv Animal Protection Center — an animal catcher and a veterinarian — in the boat. We started from Naftohavan. You could float above the fences there: the water was over 5 meters deep, with only the attics sticking out.

Hardly anyone was “cruising around” there: the russians were just 400 meters away. We saw a garage for a truck, and next to it, a dog was drowning. It turned out later that its leg had been broken and healed incorrectly, so it couldn’t swim. We grabbed it by the mane, pulled it out, and began to resuscitate it. It didn’t breathe for 15 minutes. The women never gave up. The dog survived.

June 8

7 a.m. — 1060 cm (417 inches) above datum level

Alisiya from Kyiv

We had already filled our carriers with animals and were heading back to the rendezvous point. Suddenly, a rooster crowed. We looked around and saw a lot of chickens in a tree. Misha climbed up to get them, and at that moment, shelling started. The place where we would have reached in a minute was peppered with shrapnel. Thus, it turned out that the rooster saved us.

We found a hiding place for a while. We sat there and saw a boat floating by without people… What had happened there?

Then we continued with the chickens, but there were too many — about 20. There was no room for them in the boat. We found an empty plastic barrel floating in the yard and filled it with chickens. We went back like this: a motorboat, towing a rubber boat, and tied to that, a barrel full of chickens.

It was easy to go out on the water for the first couple of days, but then the shelling started. The police and the military commander began prohibiting it… One would allow it, another would not. We spent a lot of time getting permissions.

Rostyslav from Kherson

We were rescuing animals in Zymivnyk. There were many drowned dogs because people had left them chained up.

In one barn, kittens were floating under the roof. The barn was barred, so they couldn’t get out. We broke the roof and got them out. We named one kitten Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and the other remained nameless.

We also transported a goat named Torpedo by boat. We called her that because she was fast and kept running away from us. She somehow got to the second floor of a house, onto a veranda; we barely managed to catch her.

And then there was such a touching reunion between this goat and her owner! The woman stood beyond a checkpoint, and we brought the goat. She shouted, “Zorya, Zorya!” The goat replied, “Meh-eh-eh!” and ran to her owner, who ran to the goat. Such a reunion!

Hanna from Mykolaiv

The third day was the worst. We were rescuing animals in Naftohavan. They were covered in mazut and dirt, and everything smelled awful.

I was amazed at how our people came together. I had never seen volunteers help each other like this. It was probably the only day in the history of animal protection organizations where they were stealing animals from each other. I barely managed to get a dog out of the water before the carrier with it disappeared. I said, “People, you can’t do this!”

I was wearing summer shorts and a T-shirt, and that’s how I swam. But that day, people from Odesa gave us an expensive yacht, and from then on, we rescued animals on that boat.

We sailed around Ostriv, scraping the bottom against everything: you couldn’t see where you were! We would reach a fence, climb onto it, and then climb onto the roofs. That’s where we caught the animals.

We saved a dog I remember the most. I climbed onto the roof and fell through. My friend Yulia went ahead and said, “Here’s a dog standing on a board in a straight line, its paws bleeding.” The dog wanted to live so much that it stood on that plank for who knows how long.

As soon as we got the dog to shore, a woman took it in and is still happy with it. Imagine, people from shelters were not the only ones waiting on the shore; there were also people taking animals for themselves.

Once, I received an address: 24 Dorofeyeva Str. — 12 dogs, 20 cats. We sailed there, scraping this yacht, and a woman from the window said, “I told you, I won’t go anywhere without my animals!” I consider people who acted like this Anya heroes. We evacuated her with her cats and dogs.

Oksana from Kherson

I posted the first photos on Facebook, and people started reaching out to me. They said they would take the animals. So I started bringing the rescued animals to my garage, my apartment, my son’s apartment, and the apartment of my neighbor who had left. At one point, I had 80 cats at once — wet, dirty, scared. We rescued these cats, let them out, fed them, and went back again. And so it went until nightfall. There wasn’t even time to drink water!

June 9

7 a.m. — 1035 cm (407 inches) above datum level

Natalia from Oleshky

The water started to recede. By 11 a.m., we saw the first step and decided that we wouldn’t get another chance if we didn’t leave before the invaders recovered.

We got into the boat, loaded the dogs. I shouted, “Pray! Pray in any way you can!”

As we passed our house (crying), we could only see the roof. It was very painful.

We reached the river, and there… It was like an ocean! I had never seen so much water before. Believe me, was terrifying.

You could see the entire city of Kherson. Both my son and husband worked as captains, so they knew the area. We reached Dachi. Thankfully, it was our guys, our soldiers, who met us.

Archik, the dog, my father, my son, and my eldest grandson stayed in our boat and were brought separately. We took Luna, our German shepherd, and got into another boat with the soldiers, who brought us to Kherson.

3 p.m. — 1011 cm (398 inches) above datum level  

Katia from Kyiv

We got caught on an electric wire, and our boat started to sink.

Anything could be underwater. If it was an industrial area, there could be a train, and you wouldn’t know.

A man passing by saved us. He said, “I can’t come closer because I’ll get caught, and we’ll both go down to the bottom.” But he still approached and cut the wire. He mentioned that two soldiers had recently been dragged under a barge and died. No one was safe there.

June 11, 3 p.m. — 900 cm (354 inches) above datum level

June 12–18: A week after the explosion

Alisiya from Kyiv

We worked in Kherson for about two weeks. We were wet the entire time. We were constantly in the water; our clothes barely dried overnight. The water was disgusting, full of dead bodies. Then the rains started. You’d come out of the water only to be drenched by the rain. Vadym and Misha would get into their wetsuits in the morning and keep them on until night.

Once, we had to make a choice. Two dogs were sitting on a pile of debris, not coming into contact with anyone. We needed to catch them with a noose, but we only had one. We understood that while catching one dog, the other would escape. We chose the dog missing part of its paw. The other ran off across the boards and debris. The rescued dog is still looking for a home. After the initial hype wave, the interest in these animals faded.

Katia from Kyiv

I decided to make a film from the footage we shot. It was supposed to show only what I saw. I wanted these images not to be forgotten. I think few people can imagine what really happened there.

When I arrived in Kherson, I realized how hard it was to live there. It looked like hell, honestly. In such conditions, you revert to basic needs: where to get water, food… And people are united around one goal — survival.

Some people stay in Kherson to feed stray animals. I know an old woman, Tetiana. She says, “The animals wait for me every day at two. And I must go feed them.”

June 20. When the Water Receded

3 p.m. — 560 cm (220 inches) above datum level 

From the Hydrometeorological Center report: as of June 23, the water level has stabilized at values characteristic of the Dnipro River’s hydrologic regime.

Oksana from Kherson

When the water receded, everything was in a terrible condition. The stench was unbearable! Many animals had died. People were carrying everything out of their apartments; there were heaps of trash everywhere. All those refrigerators, washing machines — everything was ruined and useless. On top of that, there was shelling. The heat was unbearable, and we were delivering humanitarian aid and animal feed in bulletproof vests.

Natalia from Oleshky

We kept the neighbor’s German shepherd until volunteers sent Archik to Poland to his owner. We also had to give away Luna because we had to move to an apartment in Mykolaiv. We didn’t leave until we found her a place. She now lives in the Mykolaiv region with a man who has a house and garden. He sends us videos showing how she’s doing.

Hanna from Mykolaiv

For me, Bahira symbolizes this tragedy. My friend Liudmila Melnykova from the Moyi Zhyvi Sobaky (My Living Dogs) Odesa shelter took care of her for a long time. Bahira was not young and had to spend two days in the water. She could barely walk. We hired a rehabilitation professional who worked with her daily.

She couldn’t tolerate other dogs or cats. She only loved people. It was tough to find her a home. We searched for a year—a whole year! The whole world knew about her; everyone asked, but no one took her.

Only in February did I take her to the parents of a friend. She doesn’t leave her owner’s side now. She just loves people so much.

Oksana from Kherson

I kept several cats; I couldn’t part with them. Now, I have nine cats. And 28 outside. I know all of them!

They come every morning. I feed both cats and dogs. Every evening, I cook two 5-liter pots of porridge. I give one to my neighbor, Aunt Tania. She distributes food to the animals but is afraid of the shelling; she always asks if there’s an alert or if it’s over. I say, “All clear,” — and she is already running with those buckets.

Oksana looks into a cage with a kitten

Natalia from Oleshky

People usually sympathize, but some say, “Well, we were also under shelling, so what?” The scariest thing was hearing people cry, “Help!” at night — almost the whole night. Even talking about it now gives me chills.

This has become a part of us.

***

Told by: 

Hanna Kurkurina — powerlifter, athlete, animal rescue volunteer, living in Mykolaiv. 

Natalia —  a resident of Oleshky, formerly a telephone operator, now living in Mykolaiv.

Alisiya Polykha — animal rescuer with KARG (Kyiv Animal Rescue Group). Accompanied by Mariya, Mykhailo, and Vadym. 

Rostyslav Kulyk — volunteer with the Strong Because Free organization, owner of a pit bull and three cats from Kherson.

Oksana Synenko — medical worker, volunteer, and animal rights advocate, living in Kherson.

Katia Krokha — documentary filmmaker, videographer for UAnimals, living in Kyiv. 

Interviews by Nataliya Pendiur — 508 cm (200 inches) above the datum level of the Kyiv stream gauging station.

This publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework «European Renaissance of Ukraine» project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation.

Hydrological levels at the Kherson stream gauging station were provided by the Hydrological Forecast Department of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center.

Main photo: Associated Press. Other photos provided by the interviewees and KARG, unless otherwise stated in the caption to a photo.

More than 26,000 people have signed a petition from UAnimals to the United Nations and the European Parliament “Stop Ecocide in Ukraine: Punish russia for the Crimes against Environment.” Oleksandr Todorchuk, the founder of UAnimals, had created it even before russians committed the largest act of ecocide during the full-scale war — the destruction of the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.

Signatures for the petition are still being collected. However, Ukrainian law lacks tools to hold an entire state accountable for ecocide, and the legislation of the European Union does not even include the concept of “ecocide.” Read further in our article to find out what legislative tools will help punish russia for environmental crimes.

Ecocide in Ukraine: Law and Reality

Article 441 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine states that ecocide is “the mass destruction of flora and fauna, poisoning of air or water resources, and also any other actions that may cause an environmental disaster.” Can it be argued that, according to this definition, russians have been committing ecocide with their military actions in Ukraine since 2014? To answer this, let’s recall the consequences for Ukrainian nature.

In Crimea, which has been occupied since 2014, russia is causing harm to the environment, violating international law on the management of occupied territory, primarily the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. The occupying power must preserve the natural environment in the captured territories. Instead, russia has nationalised all nature reserves in Crimea and abolished the Ukrainian laws, introducing its own ones. For some reserves, the russian authorities have terminated their protective status, giving access to visitors, while allowing deforestation and developing infrastructure for military bases.

Following russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the threat to the ecosystem has increased even more. The polluted area of the Black Sea has extended to the ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv (before the full-scale invasion, the Black Sea was mainly polluted by pharmaceutical products and pesticides from agricultural land). Shelling of the infrastructure of the Odesa port by russians led to the leakage of hazardous chemical cargo and fuel into the water. And dolphin populations are dying due to sea mining.

The russian army also damaged such industrial enterprises as Azovstal, Avdiivka Coke Plant and Lysychansk Oil Refinery through bombardments. It is currently impossible to assess the consequences of the damage and losses to the ecosystem due to the occupation of parts of Ukraine.

On June 6, 2023, russian forces blew up the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. russians flooded 5 settlements and over 63 thousand hectares of forest. The final consequences of this tragedy will only be possible to establish after the de-occupation of the affected regions in southern Ukraine. Ukraine considers this catastrophe as a war crime by russia against Ukraine and an act of ecocide.

However, Yulia Ovchynnykova, a Ukrainian MP from the Servant of the People party, PhD in Biology and an expert of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Environmental Protection through Criminal Law, comments to UAnimals that holding russia accountable for ecocide requires changes in both national and international law.

“Article 441 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine was introduced in 2001 — it has remained unchanged for 22 years. There are many evaluative concepts: mass destruction, air poisoning, environmental disaster. Therefore, we need to carefully and professionally review the national legislation,” explains Yulia Ovchynnykova.

Meanwhile, lawyer Sofia Shutiak believes that Ukrainian legislation, including Article 441 of the Criminal Code, will not help to hold russia accountable as a state — only individual russian officials.

“To hold states accountable, one should turn to international law. Typically, there must be a series of conditions for this: primarily, international legal obligations between two or more states. For example, the UN Charter obliges countries not to wage war and to resolve all issues peacefully. There should also be action or inaction by the responsible state that violates this obligation. Since 2014, russia has covertly and since 2022 has openly interfered with Ukraine’s borders and has been killing Ukrainian citizens — both civilians and military. And finally, this action must result in loss or damage. There are many such losses and damages due to the war,” explains Sofia Shutiak.

In his speech at the G20 summit in 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the preparation of a platform to assess the damage caused to Ukraine’s ecosystem by russia. Moreover, in the Peace Formula, a Ukrainian initiative to end the war, the president speaks about creating mechanisms to counteract ecocide and holding russia accountable for committing this crime. This could become a significant precedent for future similar processes worldwide.

“What’s important is that there are several steps at the international level. The first (and main) one is the 8th point of the Peace Formula — actual counteraction to ecocide and immediate protection. Thanks to the president, almost the entire world has paid attention to this issue, and it was a real driver for further action,” explains Yulia Ovchynnykova.

Ecocide in International Law: from Uncertainty to a New Vision

During the negotiation process with the European Union, Ukraine will adapt its legislation to European standards, in particular those related to the environment. The EU’s environmental policy is aimed at preventing environmental damage. It is based on shared responsibility, integrating environmental protection into all spheres of life, and the polluter pays principle.

However, the concept of “ecocide” does not exist in European law. Only this year, the European Parliament adopted a directive criminalising “cases comparable to ecocide” — actions that cause widespread, substantial and irreversible or long-term damage to large ecosystems, habitats or the quality of air, soil or water.

Some European countries independently introduce the concept of “ecocide” into their legislation. Ukraine can use their developments to update its own law on ecocide. According to Yulia Ovchynnykova, the Belgian law on ecocide could serve as an example for legislative updates. The Belgian government approved this draft law recently, in 2023. From now on, Belgium defines ecocide as “serious, widespread and long-term damage to the environment caused by unlawful actions.”

The key phrase in Belgian law is precisely the last one: “damage to the environment caused by unlawful actions.” This means that one can be held accountable not only for waging war, but also for any other unlawful actions resulting in an environmental disaster.

Scotland began considering a bill to criminalise ecocide in 2023. The authors of the bill propose punishment for “serious violations”, i.e. for adverse impacts on human life or natural, cultural or economic resources. The extent of the damage spread is also important, that is the violation should affect other territories, cross state borders and potentially harm an entire ecosystem or species.

“Ecocide is any activity that can lead to an environmental disaster. That’s why large companies, businesses and authorities resist [legislative changes]…,” explains MP Yulia Ovchynnykova. According to her, it is necessary to create a system where destroying the environment is detrimental to one’s reputation.

Stop Ecocide International Foundation has also developed a concept for defining ecocide to incorporate this crime into international law, including the Rome Statute. Their definition will be adapted to the national legislation of countries that have decided to criminalise ecocide. Among them are Belgium and Scotland.

Yulia Ovchynnykova also believes that Ukraine should pay attention to the concept developed by Stop Ecocide International: “We will adapt our legislation, so we need a single definition that will be used in European countries. The European Union mostly accepts it. The Prosecutor General’s Office considers this definition to be close to our needs.”

Retribution for ecocide: experience and instruments of influence

Despite the absence of the concept of “ecocide” in the Rome Statute and the complexity of proving this violation, precedents for holding accountable for environmental crimes already exist in international law.

In 1991, troops under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Kuwait, along with other Persian Gulf countries, immediately filed a lawsuit with the UN International Court of Justice to be compensated for damage caused by the oil spill in the Gulf waters when Iraqi forces damaged a tanker there. That year, the UN established the Compensation Commission to process claims against Iraq, including those for environmental damage. The Commission completed its work in 2005. According to its calculations, the total compensation amount to the victims exceeded $52 billion.

The compensation was paid to the victims by the UN Compensation Fund, which received a percentage from the export sales of Iraqi crude oil and pertroleum products. The final payment was made in January 2022. In February of the same year, the UN dissolved the commission.

This case can be an example for Ukraine, Environment. People. Law public organisation believes.

“… Ukraine should appeal to the UN and the Security Council to adopt relevant resolutions condemning russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine and to establish a subsidiary body to compensate for the damage caused to Ukraine. Ukraine should also demand the creation of a special fund to pay compensation to the state, legal entities and individuals affected by russia’s aggression,” the organisation’s statement reads.

Changes in international law will speed up the process for Ukraine. After the introduction of the concept of “ecocide” into the Rome Statute, this crime will be criminalised, and offenders will be arrested and tried in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In order for ecocide to be added to the Rome Statute, states that have ratified the statute must propose this amendment. Ukraine has not ratified the Rome Statute but is obliged to do so as part of the negotiation process with the European Union.

In February 2024, the European Parliament approved a new directive on environmental crimes “comparable to ecocide” and the corresponding punishments for them. The new directive qualifies offences such as large-scale forest fires or widespread pollution of air, water and soil leading to ecosystem destruction. Qualified crimes will be punishable by eight years in prison, those that result in the death of a person — by ten years in prison, and other offences — by up to five years in prison. For companies, fines will range from 3 to 5% of their annual global turnover or alternatively 24 or 40 million euros depending on the nature of the offence.

Moreover, in October 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on the impact of armed conflicts on the environment. The resolution calls for ecocide to be recognised as a crime in national legislation and international law. The resolution also defines that “serious damage or deterioration of the state of nature, which may be qualified as ecocide, may occur in peacetime or wartime.”

PACE resolutions are not binding, and they are used as guidelines by other organisations and member states of the assembly for adapting their own legislations.

Yulia Ovchynnykova believes that comprehensive actions of international organisations, PACE and the European Union will help to criminalise ecocide in international law.

“Such postulates as the President’s Peace Formula and the high level group of the International Parliamentary Alliance are efforts to promote the criminalisation of ecocide and its recognition at the international level,” summarises Yulia Ovchynnykova.

This problem is not immediately obvious, but its consequences can affect everyone. And we can all do something for fish.

Simply saying that there is a decrease in fish in Ukraine might sound like typical lamenting about the past when trees were taller and the grass was greener. It does not impress.

We could turn to statistics that show a decrease in the “stock” of fish as a natural resource. In the first two decades of independence, these “stocks” decreased by six times. Since then, according to the estimates of fish protection authorities, the situation has only worsened, with some formerly common fish species in our waters becoming rare or nearing extinction.

But I believe more in what I have seen with my own eyes. I’ve spent all my conscious life near Ukrainian water bodies, observing fish. An emptied river or lake, where life used to rage and splash, is unmistakable — like an uninhabited house or a deserted city.

Except for ichthyologists, environmental activists and avid sports fishermen, people are not very concerned about the decrease in the population of fish in the water, which is not surprising: humans and fish exist in different dimensions. Fish do not sing like birds, flutter like butterflies or entertain us like squirrels in the park. Even when we approach their environment, fish are only shadows, glimmers in the depths and circles on the surface to us.

I have long observed that most people’s associations with fish are primarily gastronomic. Try posting a photo of river fish on social media, and the comments will start pouring in: “fish soup, ‘taranka’ (dried fish) for beer, carp in sour cream, stuffed pike…” Other animals — even the “meat breed” mammals — are not automatically perceived as a future steak or roast. The silent death of a fish weighs so little that it is bought and brought to the kitchen still alive. By analogy with dehumanisation, we can say that fish as the most de-animalised creatures by humans. Even the meat of fish in Ukrainian is not called using a special term for it, like chicken or veal, but simply “fish” — no linguistic difference between alive and dead fish.

In the lives of connoisseurs of forshmak (a dish made of salty minced fish or meat) and sushi, nothing would change even if all the fish disappeared from the basins of the Dnieper, Dniester, Prut and both Bug rivers. Shops mostly sell imported fish. Even before the start of the full-scale war, the catch by Ukrainian fishermen satisfied only 15-20% of the demand. In 2022, industrial fishing in Ukraine decreased several times compared to 2021, so now the share of domestic fish in legal sales is negligible.

However, this decrease can be explained by the fact that fishing in the sea in the occupied territory is no longer included in the statistics, and in some regions, industrial fishermen don’t go out to sea due to hostilities. The chances of restoring fish populations in rivers and lakes due to reduced industrial fishing are not increasing significantly. That’s because other factors causing the decrease in fish populations haven’t disappeared; on the contrary, some have been added.

First of all, this is water pollution. In addition to industrial and animal husbandry emissions, pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers and waste, there are “products” of war — explosives, fuel and other atypical “chemicals.” In some cases, like recently in the Ternopil region, these cases are documented, but what’s happening to water bodies in the combat zone and the front-line strip is beyond our knowledge. It’s difficult to assess the damage from poisoning the Dnieper and the Black Sea due to the Kakhovka tragedy. On March 22, due to rocket hits on the Dnipro Dam, petroleum products were spilled into the Dnieper — so much that the environmental damage was estimated at 140 million hryvnias; although the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine Ruslan Strilets suggested that it could be much higher.

Fish are not the only victims of russia’s ecocide, but they are among the most vulnerable: they have nowhere to escape from poison. So, 40 years ago, several hundred kilometres of the Dniester died out due to waste emissions.

“Chemicals” kill fish in another way as well. Fertilisers from fields and gardens, entering rivers and reservoirs, cause explosive growth of microscopic algae — the water “blooms.” In such conditions, fish can’t breathe, they die and, decomposing, poison the water even more.

The second reason for fish loss is poaching. Even before the full-scale war, unofficial estimates suggested that poachers caught more fish than legal industrial fishermen. Penalties for illegal fishing in Ukraine are substantial, but the severity of the law is offset by its optional enforcement. Fishery officers don’t always manage to be everywhere and don’t always work conscientiously. Moreover, poaching tools are becoming more effective. The most despicable of them — the “electric rods” that kill everything alive in the water — were supplemented by cheap Chinese nets made of thin thread. This upgrade of the age-old method allows depleting water bodies of everything that swims, and poachers, unlike industrial fishermen and the State Agency of Fisheries, don’t care about population restoration.

Development and destruction of riverbanks also interfere with fish. Concrete embankments, sand extraction and artificial beaches where there used to be reedbeds. This strikes at places where fish live, especially where they breed. The ban on building on riverbanks is probably the most shamelessly ignored law in Ukraine. The ichthyofauna of a concreted water body becomes as impoverished as the vegetation of an asphalted yard.

Hydroelectric damming, which turned large rivers into lakes of almost stagnant water and stopped fish spawning migrations, is another complex topic. But hydroelectric power stations are being built even now — on small rivers in the Carpathians, where vulnerable, whimsical and rare fish species live: trout, grayling, Danube salmon. Their reproduction often depends on migration. The price of a bit of “green” energy is a dead river.

Companies damaging the ichthyofauna are sometimes forced to compensate for the damages — by stocking the water body with young fish. The trouble is that various fish species die, and mostly the so-called valuable ones (in terms of consumption and cooking) are stocked.

And then there are the introduced species. Within a few kilometres of your home, there’s probably a pond with reeds, water lilies and frogs. If you had gone scuba diving there several decades ago, you would have seen crucian carp, tench, pike and loach — fish species known in our area since Neanderthal times. Now it is home to the Asian silver carp, American channel catfish, Amur sleeper and the ubiquitous pest fish — the stone moroko. They are hardier and more prolific, so they rapidly displace local species.

Not only invasive fish species harm: water bodies are overgrown with Canadian waterweed, which is tellingly nicknamed the “water plague.” To clear the thickets, people introduce herbivorous and, again, Far Eastern fish, such as silver carp and grass carp. There’s also an “air plague”: the cormorant, once a seabird, has settled in rivers and lakes throughout Ukraine. In some languages, its name means “glutton” for a reason: the bird can eat up to a kilogram of fish per day.

Of course, for people who can’t tell a perch from a herring, the substitution of one fish species for another in rivers and lakes is a minor trouble. However, the disappearance of habitual biological species triggers a chain of changes that threaten ecosystems and the environment as a whole.

And finally, non-sport fishing. Fishing is one of the most widespread hobbies. It’s simple, accessible to everyone and can be relatively inexpensive. Although people fish mostly for excitement, relaxation and communion with nature, all the fish that have been caught are supposed to be taken home — if not for oneself, then for a neighbour’s cat. The person who comes back from fishing with a bag of catch is praised, while the one who returns empty-handed is laughed at.

There is a daily limit of permitted fish catch for amateur fishermen — three kilograms. This is another tradition: to measure fish in kilograms. However, a “kilo of crucian carp” can include dozens of undersized ones that will never spawn again. Or a couple of pregnant females — then instead of thousands of future fish, there will be “tasty pancakes with carp roe”. And then there are complaints that there’s been a lack of fish lately.

In spring and early summer, there’s a spawning ban, but it’s not universal (you can fish within populated areas from the shore with one rod), and there aren’t enough patrols to chase everyone attracted by the “spawning frenzy”. On many water bodies, fishery officers have never been seen. Of course, fishermen there won’t be bothered by either spawning bans or legally established minimum sizes of fish to keep. Moreover, modern high-tech fishing gear, as opposed to the old-school hook and float, allows catching more, especially small fish that haven’t had time to spawn.

“How much will they catch there!? Just a few tails,” they’ll say about a person with a fishing rod.

But when dozens of people take several individuals from a limited population every day, the time will soon come when it will not be able to reproduce. This is especially detrimental to ponds, lakes and small rivers, where fish cannot migrate from elsewhere.

In the civilised world, fishermen adhere to the “catch and release” principle. Caught fish are carefully removed from the hook and returned to the water if they are not severely injured. Somewhere this principle is applied voluntarily, while somewhere fishing is forbidden altogether. In combination with expensive licences and strict control, the “catch and release” principle makes amateur fishing less accessible to the masses and thus it protects fish.

In Ukraine, the “catch and release” culture is not very widespread yet, and even enforcing rules on fishermen is not very effective. So much depends on our goodwill.

If, while resting on the shore, you see someone fishing with nets or otherwise violating the rules, call the fisheries patrol. If you see someone dumping poisonous substances or waste into the water, throwing garbage or anything else, call the police.

If you fish, release your catch. If someone from your family or friends is fishing, encourage them to release rather than take home. The culture of perceiving fish as food, as always a legitimate and desirable trophy will not disappear instantly, but it can gradually become a thing of the past.

I’ve been passionate about fishing since childhood — it’s a hobby, a passion and a family tradition. It took me some time to embrace the “catch and release” culture too. What helped was the realisation that fish were beautiful. They’re interesting, graceful, perfect components of our vulnerable, fragile nature, which, once lost, cannot be artificially restored. We can’t admire them like flowers, birds or squirrels in the park, but it will be great to see many circles on the water again and know that there are fish.

— Skagerrak Strait. Gotland. Bornholm…

I remember reading these names syllable by syllable and placing the map on my lap again. It’s my longest journey to the north. Sitting in the passenger seat, I watch the densely grey waves of the Baltic Sea inlet pass by the window. Soon I’ll run into the Little Belt strait. I’ll splash in the cold waves and have no idea that hundreds of thousands of tons of poisonous shells lie somewhere on the bottom beneath me.

Every day, nature gets new wounds from warfare: forest fires, sea, land and air pollution. And the old scars are far from being healed.

Baltic Sea: 300 thousand tons of chemical weapons

What to do with unwanted ammunition? This question arose among the Allies after World War II. They decided to get rid of unused weapons in a seemingly quick and cheap way — by simply dumping them in the Baltic Sea. How it would affect marine life, and therefore humans, seemed to be of little concern in the forties.

It’s not known exactly how many munitions were dumped into the sea and where exactly. According to available data, most conventional munitions were sunk near Germany — over 100 thousand tons. Chemical munitions were dumped into the Little Belt and Skagerrak straits, as well as the basins around the islands of Bornholm and Gotland. The sea absorbed about 300 thousand tons of chemical munitions.

This horrifying “tradition” continued to be followed long after the war. For example, in 1961, the German government dumped cylinders with chemicals in a bay near Lübeck — just 8 kilometres from the coast. The cylinders contained chlorine, phosgene (choking gas) and the so-called laughing gas (nitrous oxide, which is now used for anesthesia and pain relief).

All these tanks corrode, slowly releasing their contents into the sea. The main pollutant from conventional munitions is the explosive TNT. It’s toxic to microorganisms, aquatic plants and fish. Releases from chemical weapons create an even more poisonous cocktail in the seawater. For example, it causes cancer in fish and other representatives of marine life. This poses a risk to people who consume such fish.

“Toxins damage marine ecosystems and threaten marine life,” says Terrence Long, founder of the NGO International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions. “TNT can burn corals and trigger harmful algal blooms… Chemicals also affect the photosynthesis of phytoplankton and the development of crustacean eggs.”

It’s not only marine life that suffers. 

In 2005, three Dutch fishermen pulled up their nets, but instead of fish, they found munitions there. They exploded, and the fishermen died. And since the war, at least 91 German fishermen have been injured in such incidents.

How to prevent the leakage of toxins? Can we remove munition tanks from the Baltic Sea? These questions haven’t been asked since World War II, but they are acute now. Solutions are just being developed. It is possible that a remotely operated vessel will examine the seabed. Germany has initiated a €100 million project to search for munitions in the sea.

There have also been unsuccessful attempts to neutralize munitions. In 2019, Germany, together with NATO, detonated 42 shells in the heart of a marine reserve in the Fehmarn Belt strait. At that time, dead marine mammals — Phocoena or porpoises — began to appear on the German coast. The public was outraged, and the German Ministry of Defence banned underwater explosions that same year.

In that notorious case, deaths from echolocation disruption were confirmed in a dozen of animals. In 2022 alone, in the Black Sea the number of dolphins killed was estimated at thousands.

The operation of sonars on warships disorients dolphins: they can’t find food, lose weight, and their immune system weakens. Dolphins die of hunger and diseases that a healthy body could cope with. Russian aggression kills not only people.

Ocean: Ironbottom Sound

In February 2001, a typhoon raged over the coral island of Ulithi in Micronesia. When it subsided, the islanders felt a strong smell of oil. Later, one of the lagoons was covered by a huge oily slick. It turned out that the typhoon shook the American oil tanker at the bottom of the ocean, which had been sunk by a Japanese torpedo back in 1944. It made itself known decades later after sinking. In 2001, over 90,000 litres of aviation fuel leaked from the USS Mississinewa tanker into the ocean.

The US cleaned up this slick and pumped more than 7.5 million litres of fuel from the ship’s tanks, but there was still more left. Millions of dollars were spent on the operation, but it’s just a drop in the ocean. And unfortunately, that expression isn’t as figurative as it sounds. Governments in the Pacific region have found that over 3,800 ships from World War II lie at the bottom of the ocean. Approximately 50 oil tankers are among them. All these ships and their tanks corrode, releasing toxic substances into the water. And when the rust finally eats through the wall of one of the tanks, oil or fuel leaks into the ocean.

Oils and fuels are not just ugly stains against the backdrop of the blue sea. They are destructive to coastal ocean ecosystems. Moreover, they can harm human health. Toxins are released in areas where fish is caught for Japanese sushi. Local islanders eat this fish, and it’s also served to tourists who come to enjoy the tropics. Such idyllic and pristine, from the outside…

Governments of Oceania countries occasionally remind us that the flora and fauna of coral reefs are dying due to oil leaks from sunken ships. Local residents insist that the responsibility for this should be taken by the US and Japan. Most countries in Oceania lack the resources to raise ships or clean up the sea on their own.

In some places in the ocean, you can find not just single sunken ships, but actual graveyards of ships from World War II.

First of all, it’s the Ironbottom Sound. You can find it on the map in Oceania, among the Solomon Islands, namely between the islands of Guadalcanal and Malaita. 

This strait got its name after the war. In 1942-1943, several battles took place here, and dozens of ships and planes sank in the strait. Its bottom became literally covered in metal. Researchers from the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme have estimated that there are 550 thousand tons of metal debris on the “iron bottom.”

Chuuk Lagoon in Micronesia also hides tons of iron. During World War II, Japan chose a small group of islands, remote from the rest of the land, to build a stronghold here. Amidst tropical landscapes, arsenals grew, radars rose, and runways stretched out. The clear Chuuk Lagoon (then called Truk) became the base of the Japanese fleet. Aircraft carriers, cruisers, tankers, submarines — every possible type of warships — were anchored here. In February 1944, American planes took off from the Marshall Islands, approached Chuuk Lagoon and opened fire on the Japanese fleet. After this attack, over 60 ships ended up at the bottom. They sank in a very small area — only 60 kilometres in diameter. So, the lagoon turned into a ship graveyard. You can even see with your own eyes the gruesome wreckage covered in algae and corals. It’s possible if you get to Micronesia and don’t mind wearing a diving suit.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is a place of incredible colours and life forms. If no efforts are made, toxins from ship fuel will eventually get there. Not far from the reef in the ocean, two American ships lie: Lexington aircraft carrier and Neosho tanker. Both sank during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. Researchers believe that together they contain nearly 19 million litres of oil.

Sunken ships or their wreckage are a war legacy that is not so easy to get rid of. The fact that missile cruiser Moskva and ship Tsezar Kunikov sank is a welcome development. However, they raise a lot of questions: how and when to raise this debris from the Black Sea, and how to dispose of it? Besides large vessels, the Black Sea is forced to absorb the wreckage of damaged ships, small boats, maritime drones and even the shells themselves. All this poses many challenges for the state and society.

Forests: deforestation, explosions and fungus

“Zelenka [ed.: green area] will protect our soldiers,” I remember this being repeated on social media at the beginning of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, awaiting spring. The forest covers the soldiers, and the enemy hides in it. The forest takes the hit but receives terrible scars itself. We are witnessing endless forest fires now. Environmentalists claim that about a third of Ukraine’s entire nature reserve fund has been affected by the war.

Combat actions have crippled ecosystems since World War I. It is clear that neither animals nor plants can survive direct attacks. However, it was not fire and explosions that left the longer-term effects, but the deforestation for military purposes. It reached enormous proportions even during World War I. In Britain, there was even a timber crisis. After the war, the British created the Forestry Commission, which undertook to plant new trees. World War II thwarted these efforts, but the Commission did not stop its work. It still operates today.

During World War II, people used more wood than steel, researchers tell about the history of American forests. Barracks, ships, docks, military factories, housing for soldiers, ammunition boxes were built from wood…

The United States, European countries and even Japan were full of deforested or destroyed forests. So, the newly formed United Nations put the issue of forest conservation on the agenda. As part of it, a permanent organisation responsible for forestry was established. It adopted a forest restoration programme. However, decisions on what and how to do were left to individual countries.

Different countries introduced new legislation in forest protection. For example, Japan passed laws on how exactly to restore forests. The deforested areas were mainly replanted with Japanese cedar and cypresses.

Meanwhile, in the United States, a large study was conducted — a kind of audit of forests. It turned out that timber was being depleted in forests one and a half times faster than new trees were growing.

After the war, the American Forestry Association adopted a programme urging more effective protection of forests from fires, increased control over forest pests and diseases, and stricter regulation of logging. In 1947, Congress passed the Forest Pest Control Act, followed by various legislative acts that provided mechanisms for cooperation in fighting forest fires. In 1949, a law was passed for the accelerated restoration of forests.

In Germany, efforts were made to revive not only forests but also large urban parks destroyed by bombings. In Hamburg, linden, maple, birch and oak trees were planted, and by 1980, the city’s vegetation had recovered to pre-war levels. In Dresden, botanical gardens hired boys to search for tree sprouts among the stones. Some of those saved trees are still growing today. However, greenery returned to the city much more slowly than in Hamburg.

In Ukraine, forests were also actively planted after the war. However, they approached it with a rule typical of Soviet times: the more and faster, the better.

You’ve probably walked through forests planted in the 50s and 60s, where pine trees stand in rows. Pine grows quickly, so it was mostly planted, along with fir and spruce. Such forests have an unnatural structure: the trees grow denser than usual, most of them of the same species and age. They are much more prone to disease and drying out than trees in natural virgin forests.

At the same time, World War II brought less obvious consequences for the forest.

In August 1944, American landing craft approached the French shores of the Mediterranean Sea. At that time, the Germans had already occupied France, and the Allies intended to push them away from the coastline. The operation was called Dragoon. It was successful for the Allies: the south of France was liberated. However, afterwards, the local trees began to get sick.

During Dragoon operation, soldiers unloaded ammunition boxes. These boxes were made of plane trees, the wood of which was infected with the fungus Ceratocystis platani.

When this fungus infects a tree, the flow of water and nutrients gradually becomes disrupted, ulcers appear under the bark, leaves wither and the bark becomes spotted. Within a few years, the sick plane tree dies.

North American plane trees had developed immunity to this disease, but European trees were vulnerable to it. In the first 15 years after the war, the plane tree disease did not manifest itself in any way. But then the acute phase began. The disease spread through the length and breadth of Europe south of the Alps, including large areas of Italy, Greece, Switzerland and southern France.

Even decades after the war, the disease was still killing trees in southern Europe. In the Italian municipality of Forte dei Marmi, 90% of plane trees died out between 1972 and 1991. In Greece, where the disease was noticed only in 2003, it quickly destroyed hundreds of trees.

In the French city of Toulouse, the problem affected a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the Canal du Midi. Tourists flock here to see the incredible landscapes: the canal surrounded by magnificent plane trees. In 2006, a deadly fungus was recorded here, and the trees began to die. Over 5 years, along the canal, 2,500 plane trees were cut down and replaced with more resistant species.

Land: Red Zone, the Poisoned Forest

The Battle of Verdun is one of the bloodiest battles in World War I, which took place in northern France in 1916. Over a hundred years have passed, and the battlefield is still covered with craters formed by intense artillery shelling. There used to be farms and small villages here, but now it’s almost an untouched forest. However, you can’t just wander around: access is restricted. And the reason is not the craters.

Firstly, the area between Verdun and Lille is full of unexploded shells.

“Explosions and ground movements during the war have short-term effects, but nature restores itself. And the mined areas pose a threat of pollution for decades,” explains Anastasiia Splodytel, a soil science expert and PhD in geography.

Secondly, chemical contamination of the soil causes invisible to the naked eye, but even more lasting consequences.

“At the site of the Verdun battle, the content of copper and lead in the soil still exceeds the norms for France. There is also a lot of arsenic, especially in the places where ammunition was burned,” says Anastasiia.

Immediately after the war, the French government declared the lands where the Verdun battle had taken place unsuitable for life and agriculture. The most affected areas were called the Red Zone. This is not a continuous area of ​​territory, but separate “spots” on the map near the city of Nancy, further west from Verdun to Soissons, and from there north to Lille.

Over the years, the Red Zone has significantly decreased, as part of the land has gradually recovered. Now it is approximately 170 square kilometres. You can’t live or walk here, and of course, eating plants grown in the Red Zone is prohibited.

Toxic substances from the soil migrate to water, and then to food products, and can therefore end up in the bodies of animals and humans. For example, lead causes neurological development disorders in children, while copper causes respiratory organ cancer.

During World War II, the soil was contaminated wherever battles took place, but there is very little data on this. In addition to shrapnel and explosives, chemical substances got into the soil with the medicines of German soldiers. This is about Losantin (calcium hypochlorite). This substance contains active chlorine, so it can damage plants and change soil properties. Zlatko Zlatanov, a historian and employee of the Second World War Museum, says, “German troops used the so-called chlorine containers, or losantin containers, to decontaminate the body in case of a chemical attack. We have such finds in the museum, they were sent to us. These losantin containers are small boxes containing chlorine tablets. They had such a thing on all fronts.”

There is no information on the chemical state of the land in the 1940s at all: no one just collected it. Therefore, scientists cannot accurately assess the impact of the war. There were no restoration measures either, except for mechanical demining. “I talked to people who were involved in the state restoration processes. There was nothing like that — only the infrastructure was being restored,” says Anastasiia Splodytel. “If they collected any explosive items, they were taken to one field or placed in one pit and buried. And no one still knows how many such places there are on the territory of Ukraine.”

No matter how terrible the land pollution after World War II was, the consequences of modern combat actions will be no less noticeable. “Types of ammunition, characteristics of waging war have changed and become more destructive than during World War II,” explains the researcher. “High-explosive, armour-piercing, phosphorus, and most likely even bacterial weapons are used. That is, they apply the full range of possible impacts, which significantly differs from the technical capabilities that existed in the forties. The shock wave and explosion products spread over a larger area.”

Modern warfare is striking not only for its different power, but also for the quantity of ominous “gifts” left in nature. Potentially, about 30% of Ukraine’s territory is mined, according to the State Emergency Service. This can be compared to the area of Greece or, let’s say, four areas of Switzerland.

It will take more than 700 years to clear the mines with the resources currently available in Ukraine. The good news is that the mines themselves can at least be technically neutralised.

But how to deal with other consequences of wartime activities for the land?

One of the global practices is land preservation. For example, in Denmark and the Netherlands, nature reserves have been established in areas contaminated by military actions.

In Germany, the areas of former military training grounds have become protected. They were actively used during the Cold War. Then, the training grounds became unnecessary. Some of the land was sold by the state to private owners for cleaning and construction. At the same time, about 120,000 hectares were put under protection — as part of the National Nature Heritage programme. For example, these are areas on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea or in Saxony, in the natural parks Dübener Heide and Fläming.

***

Before the full-scale war, I was lucky enough to visit Dzharylgach. I swam as far as I could, watching for pods of dolphins. And indeed they were there: diving carefree near the shores of the Kherson region. Will our generation be able to swim there again without fear, splash on the Kinburn Spit or peacefully wander along the shores of Tuzly Lagoons without encountering dead dolphins? Will weapons from the Baltic Sea be neutralised in my lifetime? Will it be possible to eat berries from the forests in northern France? I’m not sure.

Over time, the land, destroyed plants and damaged landscapes will recover on their own. However, to get rid of other war consequences, billion-dollar programmes and many years of work are needed.