War impacts Black Sea and the Sea of Azov
New Russian threats in Kherson bring the effects of the conflict on marine pollution back to the forefront. Research published last summer identified at least 70 chemicals from weapons in the waters of the Black Sea. Even the clashes and bombings are having devastating effects on marine wildlife.
Kiev (AsiaNews) - According to intercepts by Ukrainian hackers, Russia's military plans include a new attack on Kherson, the city recaptured by Ukraine at the end of 2023. This could lead to a real ecological catastrophe in the Black Sea, according to Ukrainian scholars who report in a Radio Svoboda broadcast that the level of pollution in the Sea of Azov is already extremely worrying.
The Russians are reportedly planning to intensify their attacks on energy infrastructure and destroy Kherson's water collection facilities with drones and ballistic missiles, with disastrous consequences extending as far as Romania.
As Ukrainian biologist Mikhail Son explains, the ‘war regime in many ways resembles the regime of a nature reserve, with no tourist trips, no fishing, little coastal development, no extraction of resources from wells; in fact, the sea is at rest, and suddenly it is overwhelmed by very violent actions, with unpredictable consequences’.
The first phase of maritime warfare took place in 2022, with a concentration of military ships, the bombing of sea cliffs such as Zmeinyj, the destruction of beaches at the tip of Kinburn, and direct clashes at sea, where ammunition, shipwrecks, and unexploded bombs were dumped, creating genuine “war pollution.”
In this regard, a group of experts conducted research on “Threats to the Black Sea Ecosystem,” published in the summer of 2025, which calculated at least 70 chemicals from weapons, as well as “many unknown and unclassifiable elements.”
substances have toxic properties that are highly harmful to various organ systems in vertebrates, including the nervous system. Bullets or shrapnel left over from the fighting can cause accidental ingestion by many species of birds, which inadvertently inhale small particles or sand to aid digestion.
The beaches themselves remain heavily polluted from the fighting, which destroys the sewerage and cleaning systems in coastal cities, as happened catastrophically in Mariupol.
Another highly traumatic event was the destruction of the Kakhovsk power plant dam on June 6, 2023, for which the Russians and Ukrainians blame each other, almost certainly due to the large amount of explosives placed in the area by the Russians.
Further destruction occurred on the Dnipro River, in the Dnepro-Butsk estuary, and in the Black Sea Gulf of Odessa, which experts analyzed by comparing data from these areas in 2020, noting a frightening increase in pollution levels. According to Son, as a result of these summer actions, the Black Sea has “overheated.”
Another Ukrainian biologist, Professor Pavel Goldin, confirms that ‘after the explosion of the Kakhovsk dam, there was a mass die-off of marine organisms, fish and molluscs, with the transfer of freshwater organisms into the sea, their migration and death, and their appearance in unusual places’.
These factors are difficult to verify fully due to the inaccessibility of the areas involved in military operations, but the impression is that of a veritable extermination of the marine ecosystem. In addition to the consequences of the war, at the end of 2024, two Russian oil tankers were damaged in the Kerch Gulf due to storms, causing fuel oil to spill into the sea. The oil could not be removed and contaminated the coastline over long distances.
Furthermore, the clashes and bombings spread frightening sounds in the depths of the sea, which are also classified as pollutants that threaten marine fauna, especially dolphins, whales, and other large fish.
The frequencies are so intense that they cause hemorrhages in the acoustic apparatus of marine animals, which wash up on beaches where they die. Control mechanisms for navigation in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov have completely broken down, partly due to the passage of the ‘shadow fleet’ of Russian tankers transporting gas and oil in circumvention of international sanctions, ultimately turning the ‘sea of passage’ into an increasingly impracticable and deleterious swamp over which Russia wants to have total control.
.png)
10/08/2017 21:41
30/12/2021 15:44
29/12/2018 08:07
26/11/2018 08:50
