To the humanitarian tragedy, Ukraine Add ecological disaster. The bombing of fuel depots and factories release chemicals into the atmosphere that contaminate soils and aquifers, jeopardizing Europe’s granary.

“How can you produce healthy food when you are using water that may be contaminated or a soil that may have been contaminated?” asks Maite Mompó, director of ‘Stop Ecocidio’ in Spanish.

About a million shells fall on Ukrainian soil every month, unleashing huge fires that have affected 160 nature reserves. When the war is over, Ukraine will have to rebuild cities and infrastructure. However, recovering its natural environment will take much longer.

In this sense, Javi Raboso, spokesman for Greenpeace, points out that “It will take decades, and even generations. to recover”. For this reason, the Greenpeace spokesman defends that “it is urgent that any initiative for the restoration of Ukraine includes the restoration of its ecosystems, of nature”.

Although the crime of ecocide is pending to be regulated by the Rome Statute, Putin could add one more cause to the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. “The Rome Statute considers as a war crime the Serious and lasting damage to the environment“, says Mompó in this regard.

Among the 900 actions against the natural environment documented by the local organization Ecoaction and Greenpeace, are the bombardments around nuclear power plants Zaporizhia and Chernobyl. Raboso warns that “if there were a nuclear accident at any of the power plants, this impact could be much greater.”

AND in the sea, there is another disaster barely visible: the one of thousands of dead cetaceans due, it is believed, to sonar from Russian ships.