On the banks of the Desna River, Serhiy Kraskov, mayor of the small village of Slabyn in the Chernihiv region, in northern Ukraine, can only see the damage. “It’s a roach. He died recently. We see him because his eyes are clear and not blurry“, he confided to the Guardian. “Everything is dead, from the smallest minnow to the largest catfish.“The incidents began on August 17, when the first contaminated slick was spotted, coming from the Russian border village of Tetkino. At the time, toxic waste such as ammonia, magnesium and other nitrates from a sugar factory would have been dumped into the Seym. This is at least what the Ukrainians maintain, supporting their theory on the temporality of the discovery, violent fighting having taken place in the area at that time after the launch of. a surprise incursion by Zelensky’s troops into the Russian region of Kursk The polluted waters then crossed the Ukrainian border to reach the city of Sumy, causing the destruction of the Seym ecosystem in their path and killing its fish and molluscs. and crayfish due to the sudden drop in oxygen levels to near zero As he comes to observe the devastating effects of pollution on the river during a weekend in mid-September, Serhiy Kraskov. can only deplore their extent. “The smell was terrible. We could barely breathe. The river was calm. Nothing moved, except a few frogs“, he remembers.
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“A catastrophe of great magnitude”
Serhiy Zhuk is the head of Chernihiv’s ecological inspection. For him, there is no doubt: this is indeed an attempted ecocide of Russian origin. “Vladimir Putin’s desire to eradicate Ukraine extends to nature. They send missiles into the air, burn our forests and threaten to blow us up with nuclear bombs. We can rebuild a bridge or a school. Unfortunately, it takes longer for wildlife to recover“, he denounces before adding “The Desna was one of our cleanest rivers. It is a catastrophe of great magnitude. More than 650 km are polluted. Not a single organism survived. This is unheard of. It is the first completely dead river in Europe.“
As a safety measure, the head of the ecological inspectorate has decreed a ban on fishing and swimming in the river, as well as using it to water livestock or water gardens. As Zhuk points out, while restoring a healthy ecosystem for wildlife could take years, water consumption in the capital would remain safe. And for good reason, measures were quickly taken, notably involving the use of 120 tonnes of cleaning products as well as the installation of nets to collect dead fish on the Desna, as indicated by Svitlana Hrynchuk, Ukrainian Minister of Protection. of the environment. Recent rains have also helped disperse some toxins.
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