War in Ukraine - an environmental time bomb

Investigations awarded by the Association of Environmental Journalists and Ecological Tourism from Moldova

Putin is waging a double war in Ukraine. One is directed against the Ukrainian people, and the other, no less cruel and insidious, is against nature. Every day there are new sad reports about how the Russian military is destroying the Ukrainian environment with highly toxic weapons. In some cities that were bombed more intensely, air and soil toxicity reached critical levels. The deep and long-term consequences of the war on the quality of air, soil and water in Ukraine are no longer questioned. Since the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, environmentalists and activists tracking the impact of military action on nature have reported more than 900 cases of ecocide. Crimes against nature have been documented and cases will be taken to international tribunals for compensation. However, environmentalists from all over the world warn - the “wounds” inflicted on nature are practically incurable. In Bulgaria and Romania, the waves of the Black Sea washed ashore the clear evidence of imminent environmental disaster, and in the Republic of Moldova, just a few tens of kilometers from areas where fighting continues, there are clear signs of environmental deterioration.

Air

Polluted air has no boundaries. Emissions into the atmospheric air caused by the military aggression of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine are transferred, deposited and have an impact on the territories of other states, sometimes at a distance of thousands of kilometers. The soil in European countries is contaminated with heavy metals. Only in Ukraine 2 million m² of fields were destroyed in the first 12 months of a full-scale war.
In Ukraine, there are more than 20 thousand industrial facilities and three thousand warehouses where highly toxic waste is stored. And these objects become targets for the aggressor. Hundreds of tons of combustion products entered the environment after the devastating shelling of the Kremenchug oil refinery and fuel and lubricant warehouses.
The capacities of the Odessa and Lisichansk oil refineries were damaged. According to the State Environmental Inspectorate of Ukraine as of the summer of 2023, the aggression caused more than $52 billion in damage to land, water resources, and atmospheric air. Environmentalists state that damage to ecosystems will be felt for a long time and exceeds the damage caused to infrastructure. The environmental consequences of the crimes of the Russian aggressor will have a long-term impact on the entire European ecosystem.
This includes land contamination, air pollution, and burned forests. Russian ecocide has led to the fact that birds and animals from the Red Book are under threat.
The food is also contaminated. The world's food supply is at risk.
Military actions are destroying the forests of Ukraine, which has also affected the food security of the world. A separate topic is mined areas. Mine explosions lead to soil contamination with heavy metals - lead, strontium, titanium, cadmium, nickel. This makes the soil dangerous.

In the East and South of Ukraine there is low forest cover. But these forests perform protective functions. Destruction and damage led to significant erosion processes. In particular, in the south of Ukraine the consequences are wind erosion and desertification. This, of course, affected agriculture. Hazardous substances tend to penetrate through the soil into water or plants that are grown on it, and from there into the body of people who will consume the finished products. This was confirmed by a study by the Institute of Microbiology and Virology.
Expert Lyudmila Belyavskaya notes that “flying a rocket over a field affects fertility because toxic rocket fuel is released. Fuel residues can be deposited, for example, on wheat. As a result, manufactured products already contain toxic substances. Then the wheat grain can no longer be used for food,” explains the scientist.

Ekaterina Polyanskaya, ecologist from the organization “Ecology. Law. Man,” collected more than a hundred soil samples from different regions of Ukraine where fighting took place in order to determine the chemical changes that occurred in the soil. It turned out that the soil from a shell crater in a schoolyard in the Nikolaev region contains more than 600 milligrams of lead per kilogram. This is approximately 20 times the maximum permissible concentration.
Greenhouse gases

The constant movement of military equipment, which uses many times more fuel than conventional cars, affects the pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers led by Dutch expert Lennard de Klerk published data at the climate summit in Bonn suggesting the total figure could be more than three times higher.
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with military operations. Only for the first twelve months of the war, according to the updated assessment of the Initiative for accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from the war, they amounted to 120 million tons of CO2. This is equivalent to the total annual greenhouse gas emissions of Belgium.
This is one of the effects of the war, which will be felt not only in Ukraine, but also far beyond its borders, including in the countries of the global south and, in particular, in the least developed countries, which are often the most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change.
Such an influence will consist both in a direct increase in the risks of the manifestation of catastrophic consequences of climate change (increased temperatures and extreme heat, droughts, heavy rains and other natural disasters, loss of biodiversity, etc.), and in a possible risk of redirecting financial resources from with the help of reduction of emissions and reduction of vulnerability to climate change to increase security and militarization.
While countries and companies around the world are looking for a solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Russia's aggression continues to generate millions of tons of CO2 emissions every month.

Condemnation by ecologists of the aggressive war of the Russian Federation.

Damage to gas facilities resulted in the release of gas under high pressure into the environment, which leded to a significant number of fires in the Odessa region. Kyiv region also suffered from fires, and the capital itself was recognized as the most polluted city in the world in 2022.

July 2023, a conference on environment and health care was held in Budapest. Representatives of 28 countries signed a statement condemning ecocide - environmental war crimes committed by the Russian aggressor. The signatories, in particular, emphasized the explosion of the Kakhovskaya HPP and the irreparable destructive consequences it caused to the environment.

"We condemn Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine, which directly contradicts the goals of our conference, namely: it threatens climate stability, biodiversity, ecological cleanliness and creates direct cross-border dangers and risks that we deal today," says the the statement. The press service of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine informs.
 

Terrorist attack on the Kakhovskaya HPP

The National Public Health Agency of Moldova is confident that many dangerous substances got into the water after the Kakhovskaya HPP dam broke and flooded a large area. All this increased the risk of an outbreak of diseases that can be transmitted by water - intestinal infections, hepatitis, botulism, cholera and even anthrax, as well as those that can be transmitted by rodents - leptospirosis and tularemia. Due to Russia's destruction of the Kakhovskaya HPP, at least 32 gas stations, warehouses, and oil refineries were flooded. As a result - leakage of chemicals, oil gasoline.

In the first days, at least 150 tons of engine oil leaked into the water. Particularly severe pollution caused the flooding of industrial areas, from where chemicals were washed downstream and polluted the Black Sea. Where the water is receding now, large-scale pollution by products of the oil refining industry and industrial and household chemicals should be expected. Heavy metal pollution should also be investigated," comments chemist Manfred Santen, Greenpeace Germany.

According to the Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko, in the summer the pollution level of the Dnieper River reached more than 28 thousand times higher than normal.

Viktor Lyashko, commenting on the explosion of the Kakhovskaya HPP, said that a large number of sewage structures, cattle burial grounds, and cesspools were flooded. Contaminated water entered the water supply networks. All this led to outbreaks of acute intestinal infectious diseases. These are acute intestinal infections and viral infections - hepatitis and parasitosis.

According to the "Ukrainian Environmental Protection Group", due to the destruction of the dam, a lot of combustible and lubricating materials got into the water, which are toxic to aquatic life and can form a film on the surface of the water. In addition, the flooding of settlements, including cesspools, agricultural land, gas stations means that an unusually large amount of pollutants fell into the sea. This can affect different groups of living organisms – from plankton to cetaceans in the Black Sea, - the Group writes.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, stated that as a result of the destruction of the Kakhovskaya HPP dam, warehouses with substances dangerous to nature and people and burial grounds for cattle, in particular, infected with anthrax, were underwater.

From the south of Ukraine to Europe

Polluted water from the channel of the Dnieper flowed into the Black Sea. A plume of dirty water, including silt, a fertile layer of the soil of flooded territories and the remains of washed away settlements, combined with the sea currents of the northwestern part of the Black Sea and headed south to the coast of Romania and Bulgaria. The south of the Kherson region is the place of the largest concentration of nature-protected territories in Ukraine. It is here that the most important territory for wetland birds in the entire northern Black Sea region is located. They are protected at the international level by the Ramsar Convention and are part of the Emerald Network of Europe.

According to the "Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group", due to the explosion of the Kakhovskaya HPP, negative consequences for wildlife will manifest on an area of ​​at least 5,000 km². 1). Impact on nesting colonies of birds. Important nesting sites of wetland and coastal waterfowl were destroyed in the flood zone. These are tens of thousands of individuals. It is in the floodplains of the lower Dnieper that the largest colonies of herons and other colonial birds in the region are concentrated. The catastrophic impact of bird traps during the nesting period, in particular the presence of chicks. There is no time for the creation of new colonies and repeated breeding. Herons and grebes, terns, terns, ducks, herons, shepherds, coots and moorhens, whooper swans lost their nesting colonies.
Impact on environmental protection objects of international importance

There are nature protection areas of international importance in this area. The consequences of the terrorist attack negatively affected the territory of the Emerald Set, Kakhovske Reservoir, Velykyi Luh National Nature Park, and Bazavluk, wetlands of international importance in the Bolshie and Malye Kuchugury Archipelago. These places were the largest places in the region for nesting colonies of martins, terns, herons, as well as waders and other birds in the summer. These colonies numbered thousands of birds, among which were rare. They played an important role in maintaining the number of populations of rare species throughout Europe. During migration, these birds stopped to rest and feed precisely on the coasts of the Black Sea and Sivash. Many populations of wetland birds, which flew here from Northern Europe, wintered in the south of the region in winter.
The change in the conditions of existence became disastrous for wetlands and led to their rapid degradation. How many of them will survive the winter and return to Northern Europe?

Impact on the territory of the Emerald Network

The flooded territory fully or partially includes 9 objects of the Emerald Network of Europe, created by the decisions of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2020. The loss of natural features of these territories has led to the threat of Ukraine fulfilling its obligations to preserve these territories for the whole of Europe.

How to gather evidence to recover environmental damage from Russia through international courts

One of the methods of calculating environmental damage is counting how much land can no longer be used for its intended purpose. When building materials burn out, toxic substances enter the air, depending on whether it is linoleum or DPS or paint. Lacquers can form various toxic formaldehydes, nitrogen oxides, which are dangerous to life. And cause cancer. International experts - ecologists consider the fixation of war criminals to be the first priority measure.

The reasons for the need to investigate criminals against the environment are, first of all, necessary for the protection of Ukrainians, the prevention of new such crimes, the possibility of liability for the guilty. The first step to obtaining compensation is a clear establishment of the fact of damage. The investigation of war crimes against the environment in Ukraine may prevent the commission of ecocide in the course of armed conflicts or wars in the future.

According to the calculations of the State Environmental Inspectorate, a day of Russian aggression costs Ukrainian ecology 4 billion UAH.

To be continued.

"This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe".

Taras Zozulinskyy (Ukraine), Cornelia Cozonac (Centrul de investigatii Jurnalistice Moldova)  

14/12/2023