Spring deaths: Dolphins are massively killed in the Black Sea through Russian ecocide - investigation (photo)
In November 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky stated during the G20 summit that 50,000 dolphins were destroyed as a result of Russian aggression in the Black Sea. This amount is a fifth of the entire dolphin population. Their death will affect the entire ecosystem of the sea. Russian ecologists could not ignore it, given the appearance of dead dolphins in Crimea. Without any evidence, they stated that it is the result of an "infection" that "sooner or later". And they closed the topic.
Scientists from different Black Sea countries have found patterns that confirm the direct involvement of the Russians in the mass death of dolphins. "We have also systematized on the interactive map all the documented cases of detection of dead dolphins," - said in a study NGL. Media. The first delphin was first killed on March 27, 2022.
Then the doctor of biological sciences, the head of the scientific department of the Natural Park "Tuzlsky estuaries" in Odesa region Ivan Rusev received an unusual photo of the dead dolphin in the messenger. "Fresh, without traces of nets or detachable swimmers. It is clear at once - something is wrong," - says Rusev. Two years before the beginning of the Great War, experts of all Black Sea countries (except Russia) counted about 250,000 dolphins of three species.
According to Rusev, about 50,000 dolphins were killed in the Black Sea. It was he who was the first to call these losses, and this is what attracted the attention of the world press. At the same time, it raised many questions about how this can be counted. "The remains thrown ashore do not show the real mortality of animals. Some of them remain at the bottom, their lungs are filled with water and they sink. Still throwing part of the shore, but soon takes away waves.
My colleagues from different countries, including the US, conducted research, [ which prove] that only 6-8% of corpses were thrown ashore. We calculated the found dolphins on the coast in 2022 and so came to the figure of 50 thousand, "-explained Ivan Rusev. These losses are confirmed by a group of Ukrainian and Polish scientists.
"In three months from February 2022, 37500 to 48,000 cetaceans were killed," they say in the article in the prestigious British Scientific Journal of Biology Letters, published in the spring of 2023. Experts call several causes of death of animals in the Black Sea. "We are considering many scripts and, as you can see, they are in one way or another related to combat. It is that we as scientists try to convey to the world community: the war causes irreparable harm to nature," scientists conclude.
Due to the mass death of marine mammals on the beaches of Odessa region, the regional prosecutor's office began criminal proceedings on ecocid. Law enforcement officers opened the case in the summer of 2022, at the same time, parallels with a large -scale ecocid in the Persian Gulf, when the Iraq's military blew up Kuwait oil wells in 1991. It was the first example of the punishment of the aggressor precisely for the damage to the environment.
The UN Compensation Commission considered all claims for the losses and losses caused by Kuwait as a result of a military invasion. Payments could be received by both people and organizations affected by the actions of the Iraqi army. Recall that the actions of the occupiers are an obvious act of ecocid and a war crime and in the case of undermining the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. GUR was warned in April 2022.