‘2 Million Living Beings in Danger’: Zelensky Says Water from Ukraine Dam Collapse May Poison Black Sea

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the ecological disaster triggered by the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam has become a global problem as highly contaminated water is flowing into the Black Sea.

Zelensky said the flood waters raging through the lower Dnipro River valley brought with them sewage, oil, chemicals and possibly anthrax from animal burial sites.

“At least two anthrax burial places are in the temporarily occupied territories. What is happening to those sites we do not know yet,” Zelenskiy said in an online discussion with environmental activists.

The destruction of a major Russian-held dam on the river on Tuesday left 600 square kilometres of the region under water.

Both Ukraine and Russian have accused each other of blowing up the dam on Tuesday morning, however, it is not proved yet on what led to the destruction of the crucial dam.

Zelensky said that apart from the 100,000 people affected downstream, 50,000 hectares of forests have been flooded while 20,000 animals and 10,000 birds were “under threat of imminent death”.

He further said that altogether 2 million living beings are in danger as the contaminated water spreads.

“The poisoning and contamination coming from the flooding area goes to the groundwater almost immediately, poisoning rivers and then the water basin of the Black Sea. So it’s not happening somewhere else. It is all interrelated in the world,” he said.

The Ukrainian President visited the area on Thursday after floods inundated dozens of villages and parts of the regional capital, Kherson.

The death toll from the flooding reached six as the Moscow-backed administration of Nova Kakhovka said five people had died and 41 admitted in hospital.

‘Much Bigger’ Problem for Ukraine Farming

The Ukrainian agriculture ministry said earlier this week that the dam’s destruction would not only flood tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land in southern part of the country but also turn at least 500,000 hectares of land left without irrigation into “deserts”.

It said the disaster would cut off water supply to 31 irrigation systems in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipro, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and these systems provided irrigation on 584,000 hectares.

“There were up to 1 million hectares of non-irrigated land per 500,000 hectares irrigated. If the income from irrigated land stops, it is obvious and predictable that farmers will not be able to produce and the consequences will be not for 0.5 million hectares but for 1 or 1.5 million,” Solsky said.

He called the problem with irrigation a “major issue for agriculture in the region in the long term”. “Without a source of water supply, it is impossible to grow vegetables. Grain and oilseeds will be grown using an extensive model with low yields,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine is a global major grain and oilseeds grower and exporter.

(With inputs from agencies)