Risk your life to escape occupation or hide in a basement? Complicate your journey by bringing your animals or betray them by leaving them behind? This article is about choices — and about love and responsibility.

Forty years ago, UNESCO recognized Askania-Nova as one of the world's model natural reserves. It is the oldest steppe biosphere reserve globally and the largest in Europe. However, two and a half years ago, Askania fell under russian occupation and now faces severe neglect. In an interview for the #StopEcocideUkraine project, Reserve Director Viktor Shapoval talked about the devastating impact, including animal deaths, trenches in virgin steppes, and fires.

The Exclusion Zone? No, it’s a zone of dual ecocide, a zone of lessons unlearned. This is how Ukraine’s Chornobyl might be described post-2022. One might think that after a global-scale disaster under Soviet rule, russians would have learned that where there’s a risk of radiation contamination, extreme caution is paramount, as the effects touch everyone on the planet. Yet, here they are, repeating history. We delve into this as part of the #StopEcocideUkraine project.

Since the beginning of the russian-Ukrainian war, the Truth Hounds NGO has been documenting and investigating war crimes, human rights violations, and environmental damage. As part of the #StopEcocideUkraine project, the organization’s co-director and PhD in International Law Dmytro Koval told us who and how to bring to justice for ecocide in Ukraine.

Lennard De Klerk is a Dutch businessman and scholar who was perhaps the first in the world to study the impact of military conflicts on the climate. His research primarily focuses on the war in Ukraine, but the researcher argues that humanity will feel its effects far beyond the country's borders. Learn more about these consequences in the article published as part of the #StopEcocideUkraine project.

How trees become a living shield during war, how animals settle in shell craters, and how lichens signal the revival of nature. Read the report from a Ukrainian national park near the russian border.

As part of the #StopEcocideUkraine project, we talk about what is often grandly called "love for the homeland"—a feeling deeply rooted in memories of birds singing in Sumy, encounters with wild animals near Prypiat, and night swims in Crimea. But most of all, this love lives in dreams of these places surviving, so we can one day return.

Black water. Shores covered in dead fish, crayfish, and snails. The unbearable stench. These are the consequences of pollution that came from russia and poisoned the Seym and Desna rivers in August. Local communities are still assessing the consequences, but they are already bracing for further contamination. This report from the scene reveals that russia commits environmental crimes not only through warfare.

What is happening to Ukrainian nature reserves under occupation? The destruction of entire ecosystems for the sake of profit, consumerism, and russia's further expansionist ambitions, the killing and theft of animals... Read about these and other russian environmental crimes in the OSINT investigation as part of the #StopEcocideUkraine project.

UAnimals media, together with the OSINT agency Molfar, investigated the Russian connections in the activities of the Nemo dolphinarium network.