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For the fifth year now, as I follow the news from Ukraine, I keep asking myself: Where have all those flotillas of high-profile environmental activists disappeared to? Why aren’t they laying siege to the Black Sea, calling on Russia to stop the war it unleashed — a war that has dragged into its devastation not only human beings, but the entire flora and fauna of the territories engulfed by it? … Why aren’t these desperate eco-activists gluing themselves to works of art in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg?
What is the reason for the lack of media attention to such an important issue — the colossal damage being inflicted on the environment? Could it be that Ukraine is neither in Europe nor on planet Earth?
Total silence against the backdrop of Ecoaction’s estimate that the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions associated with the war and its consequences amounted to 230 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent during the first three years of the full-scale war. The war is not only devastating Ukraine’s local environment; it is also increasing the global climate footprint.
June 6, 2023. The Kakhovka Dam is blown up. Ukrainians are devastated and in shock — approximately 620 km² of territory is flooded. Volunteers rush to save everyone still miraculously clinging to the surface: people, dogs, cats, livestock, wild animals. Animal shelters overflow, and Ukrainians take the survivors into their homes…
The torrents of water carry into the Black Sea the bodies of people, animals and birds, as well as bones washed out of flooded cemeteries…
Before its destruction, the reservoir supplied water to enormous numbers of people and vast agricultural areas. In its reports, the UN states that it was the main source of drinking water for more than 700,000 people in southern Ukraine.
The ecosystem of southern Ukraine has been irreversibly changed.
Of course, the international community responds with deep concern and a few protests — most of them organized by Ukrainians themselves.
Coincidentally, an international climate conference is taking place in Bonn at that very time, and Ukrainian activists use the occasion to raise the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant as an issue of environmental catastrophe and ecocide. Greta Thunberg’s participation in the conference gives the action additional international visibility.
And that, perhaps, is where it ends.
2026… the fifth year of the war.
My brother-in-law tells me over the phone how long they were coughing up brown mucus while taking steam baths. And who is moved by these stories from those who remain in Kharkiv under constant barrages of missiles and drones flying at them?
 I still hope that those lost flotillas of environmentalists will finally see the dead dolphins* and sail out into the Black Sea, while eco-activists calling for an end to ecocide descend upon the Hermitage in St. Petersburg in their thousands — and that the world’s media will finally write about the price of this war for our home, planet Earth.
Otherwise, what is the point of them, apart from serving the interests of their sponsors?

*During the first months of the full-scale war, one scientific study estimated war-related mortality among Black Sea cetaceans at approximately 37,500–48,000 individuals. The exact number of dolphins killed is unknown.

Ukrainian Armed Forces show how war has changed the legendary Serebrianskyi Forest (photo: GettyImages)

Ukrainian media reported, for example, about the destruction of the Lower Dnieper National Park in the Dnieper delta, which included floodplain forests, meadows, wetlands, and steppes with diverse flora and fauna. According to Fakty.ua, hundreds of mammals, such as otters and beavers, died in the park, and all the offspring of nesting birds, including pelicans, also perished.

In the Odesa region, the consequences of Russian ecocide are being recorded: the sea is turning into a garbage dump and an animal graveyard… Houses and their fragments, furniture, household appliances, and cars are floating in it. Fish are starting to die off. The consequences of ecocide are terrible. At the same time, the water carries mines and ammunition.

The Drained Kakhovka Reservoir and Its Impact on the Landscape

The whole field is crisscrossed with fiber optics from drones. Pokrovske area. Photo by Marina Vorontsova (Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier, died near Pokrovske in 2025)

According to Meduza, in June 2025 Ukrainian soldiers from the 63rd Brigade showed a forest where, across tens of square kilometers, tree branches and treetops were literally draped in fiber-optic cables from FPV drones.

What is the reason for the lack of media attention to such an important issue — the colossal damage being inflicted on the environment? Could it be that Ukraine is neither in Europe nor on planet Earth?

Yana Kosinova-Zhukovska

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