Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a river, with deadly consequences for wildlife
Serhiy Kraskov picked up a twig and poked at a small fish floating in the Desna River. “It’s a roach. It died recently. You can tell because its eyes are clear and not blurry,” he said. Hundreds of other fish had washed up nearby on the river’s green willow-fringed banks. A large pike lay in the mud. Nearby, in a patch of yellow lilies, was a motionless carp. “Everything is dead, starting from the tiniest minnow to the biggest catfish,” Kraskov added mournfully.
Kraskov is the mayor of the village of Slabyn, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. The rustic settlement – population 520 – escaped the worst of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. But the war arrived last week in a new and horrible form. Ukrainian officials say the Russians deliberately poisoned the Seym River, which flows into the Desna. The Desna connects with a reservoir in the Kyiv region and a water supply used by millions.
News report - Date unknown
In the early days of the war the Russian regime made regular threats to use nuclear weaponry, but most experts and lay-people believed that even that brutally sadistic despot would not go the extreme of destroying the earth to achieve his goals.
By 2024 Russia was doing small-scale ecocide in hopes of lending credence to their threats. Looking back, the poisoning of an entire riparian ecosystem connected to the Desna River in what was Ukraine should have been a clear signal of what was to come. But nobody listened and the nuclear weapons flew.
I am not making a joke here. This is where my brain naturally went when reading this. Let’s just hope my invasive thoughts are wrong.
[Edit: I am also not saying to appease this fucking psycho either. This is just a snippet of thought that I felt the urge to share.]