An expert group will be set up in Ukraine to hold Russia accountable for the crime of ecocide, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday, addressing activists, environmentalists and international experts.
“We are creating an expert group that will primarily deal with the consolidation of the world – so that Russia will be fully responsible for the ecocide, and that our country will not be left alone with this tragedy,” Zelensky said in a speech published tonight on social media.
Speaking about the consequences of the Russian army blowing up the dam of the Kakhovskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant, Zelensky stressed that Vladimir Putin was personally responsible for this. – This is not a natural disaster. This catastrophe is Putin. What he does, what he orders to do, personally, emphasized the Ukrainian leader.
– In more than 30 towns, life has been broken. Hundreds, thousands of people have difficult access to drinking water due to the destruction of the dam, the president of Ukraine said. Fuel warehouses, warehouses with chemicals and fertilizers are destroyed. In the occupied territories, at least two “cemeteries” of animals that were infected with anthrax were flooded, he added.
Zelensky also noted that in many places sewage went into the water. “The number of ecosystems annihilated or on the verge of extinction due to this act of terror already runs into the thousands,” he warned.
More than 50,000 hectares of forests are flooded, and tens of thousands of birds and at least 20,000 animals are flooded. wild animals are dying. “It is obvious that the Kakhovsky Reservoir has become a grave for millions of living beings,” Zelensky said. Pollutants end up in groundwater, poisoning rivers and flowing into the Black Sea.
– There is no destruction of nature “out there”. Everything in the world is strongly interconnected, stressed the president, appealing to ecologists and experts to put pressure on governments and international organizations.
“No nation should be left alone with such challenges, but for now there is no answer as to how we can deal with them together,” he stressed.