How does Russia block Ukrainian grain to win the war?
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Irpin, Ukraine (CNN) --
The pine forests surrounding Ukraine's Irpin are Oleh Bondarenko's happy place.
He discovered them as a child when his mother sent him to the area for summer camp, and he has been back ever since.
"It's a place full of memories. Vorzel, Irpin, Bucha, the forests, the fresh air. For me it's a place of respite," the 64-year-old environmental scientist told CNN during a recent trip to Irpin.
The hour-long drive from Kyiv — a journey he has made many times over the decades — was filled with anguish for Bondarenko, who worried about what he would find in Irpin.
"It's the first time I've been back since our brothers 'visited' Irpin," he said, referring to the Russian troops.
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This area was under Russian control for several weeks in March;
it has subsequently become known around the world as the site of some of the worst atrocities committed by Russia in this war.
According to the Kyiv region police, at least 1,200 civilian bodies have been discovered since Russian troops withdrew from the area.
At least 290 of them were found in Irpin, according to the city's mayor.
In addition to the number of casualties, the destruction Russian forces have wreaked on the landscape is brutal and pervasive: scorched earth, missile-ravaged forest floors, and uprooted and broken trees, while abandoned military equipment litters the floor.
Many of the city's neat houses lie in ruins;
the forest and the green spaces that surround them are prohibited.
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Anzhelika Kolomiec, a friend of Bondarenko's who lives in Irpin, told CNN that authorities have banned people from entering the forest.
"We have a beautiful forest here, but this year there will be no walks, no mushroom picking, no berries. We are not allowed in because there are mines and unexploded missiles," she said.
As the eyes of the world focus on the human suffering caused by the Russian invasion, Ukraine's environmental experts are keeping a careful record of the environmental damage it has caused, trying to repair it as soon as possible and in the hope of obtaining reparations.
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The mined and destroyed Irpin forest is just one example of the environmental damage caused by Russia's war against Ukraine.
Satellite images show that large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine are currently engulfed in forest fires sparked by explosions and aggravated by the fact that emergency services, forest management workers and the military cannot reach them. .
Smoke from fires pollutes the air.
Ukraine's fertile soil is becoming contaminated with heavy metals and other potentially poisonous substances from missiles, military equipment and spent ammunition.
Spilled fuel is polluting groundwater and ecosystems are taking a beating from tanks and other heavy technology.
All of this is damage that will be felt for decades after the war is over.
Most people may not see nature as a priority, at least not now, when Ukraine's future is at stake and people are dying every day in the midst of conflict.
"When you see the crimes against humanity, the unbelievable atrocities, people killed, tortured, raped, hundreds of them... it's natural not to think about the environmental impacts," said Natalia Gozak, executive director of the Kyiv Center for Environmental Initiatives. .
"So it is our job to pay attention and make sure that these kinds of crimes are also considered a crime and that the Russians pay for everything, not only for killing people, but also for killing our future and affecting our future well-being."
To keep Russian armored columns at bay, Ukrainian forces burst a dam near Demydiv, a town north of Kyiv.
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Bondarenko participated in the battle for Kyiv in March.
He and his son enlisted in the Territorial Defense Forces—the largely volunteer section of Ukraine's armed forces—in the early days of the war.
He has now been released from service due to his age and is slowly returning to his environmental work.
He wants Ukraine to be ready to start rebuilding smartly and sustainably when the war is over.
“Now we are facing a much bigger crisis and we have to put everything else aside, although I think that very soon we will return to the environmental agenda and we have to start thinking about it now,” he said.
Experts like Bondarenko and Gozak are also trying to raise awareness of the risks stemming from environmental damage.
Bondarenko is a nuclear physicist by training and has spent much of his career working on environmental safety in the Chernobyl zone.
The risk of nuclear contamination is on everyone's mind after the entry of Russian troops into Chernobyl and the attack on Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, in southern Ukraine.
Wim Zwijnenburg, head of the PAX Humanitarian Disarmament Project, a Dutch peace organization, said that international organizations are beginning to pay more attention to the environmental damage caused by armed conflict.
"What we saw in Iraq and Syria is that environmental pollution caused by war can pose serious risks to people's health," he said.
"But no one was paying attention to it. Everyone thought the environment was something, you know, for 'tree huggers' and people who like bees and butterflies, but then the reality on the ground was that people, and in particular children, can be exposed to the toxic remnants of war, to all kinds of chemicals from bombs and factories, or to other kinds of dangerous chemicals," he said.
Due to these past experiences, environmental scientists and humanitarian organizations have begun to create and use databases of locations known to contain hazardous materials.
Now, when they receive information about an attack, they can check the database to estimate the impact on surrounding ecosystems.
A cyclist passes through a damaged section of a forest in Irpin.
The Center for Environmental Initiatives has built an interactive map of incidents across Ukraine, breaking them down by type of damage, including nuclear and chemical contamination, hazardous waste from livestock, and degradation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
"During these massive attacks, tons of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, including uranium, find their way into the ground," said Olena Kravchenko, executive director of Environment People Law, an environmental think tank in Lviv.
According to her, the huge amounts of missiles, explosives and other types of discarded weapons and military technology used in warfare are not the only cause of pollution.
Mass burials carried out without regard to environmental safety can also lead to long-term soil and groundwater contamination.
Ukraine has accused Russia of burying bodies in hastily dug mass graves to cover up war crimes.
The shared tracking system can also help prioritize in situations where resources are extremely limited.
"Most of the environmental damage can be addressed after the conflict, but there is that 5 or 10% where you need to send experts, because there are certain types of chemicals that you need experts to clean up and not people who don't. know so much about them," Zwijnenburg said.
Sometimes the damage may not be immediately apparent.
When the Ukrainian military shot down a Russian missile flying over the Kremenets district of western Ukraine last month, some of the debris fell on an agricultural facility, according to the Ternopil Regional State Administration.
The impact site was cleaned up within hours, but the poisonous substances that leaked during the incident remained in the soil and water for days, according to the Polissya District State Ecology Inspectorate.
Residents of surrounding villages were told not to drink water from their wells, and a few days after the incident, dead fish were discovered in a river several kilometers away.
When the Polissya District State Ecology Inspectorate measured ammonium levels in the river, they found that they were 163 times higher than what is considered safe.
Animal populations are also suffering the consequences of the conflict.
Experts say the unique habitats of the Azov Sea coast in southern Ukraine are being irretrievably degraded as Russia continues to bombard the area with missiles and bombs.
The precious evergreen forests and marshes of the Kinburn Spit reserve in the Mykolaiv region were on fire for more than a week, their unique habitats devastated, according to Zinoviy Petrovich, head of the Kinburn Spit reserve.
Ukrainians must endure a brutal process of "filtration"
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Petrovich told CNN that the fires were caused by exploding rockets;
he said that the continuous shelling in the area makes it difficult to put out the fires.
"Another reason is the lack of equipment and the shortage of fuel for fire trucks," he said.
The Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park, near Odessa, is often a refuge for dozens of bird species that come there to nest.
This year, most have not been able to do so, Ivan Rusiev, a biologist and head of the park's scientific department, told CNN.
Rusiev estimates that Russian troops have dropped some 200 bombs on the park.
"All living things feel the impact of this aggressive warfare," he said, adding that the few birds that have managed to have chicks are now unable to feed them properly.
The area is famous for its white and Dalmatian pelicans, Rusiev said, with a peacetime population of about 1,500.
"Now there are only a handful of birds," he said.
Rusiev claimed that the sudden increase in the number of warships and submarines in the Black Sea is causing more damage.
"We have found dead dolphins on shore from low-frequency sonar," he said.
Ukrainian attempt to put out a fire caused by shelling in Sydorove, eastern Ukraine, on May 17, 2022.
waiting for repairs
Scientists and environmental activists are already gathering evidence of the damage inflicted on nature by war, hoping to use it in the future.
"When we triumphantly defeat [the Russians], we will be able to account for the real damage and present it to the barbarians who treacherously attacked us," Rusiev said.
An environmental NGO, Save Dnipro, has built a chatbot – software that simulates a conversation between humans – to facilitate access to pollution data and report alleged war crimes against the environment.
They are compiling the list and cross-checking the data with open sources, but verification and proper investigation will be up to the authorities.
But getting war reparations for ecological damage is a difficult task.
Zwijnenburg said that under current international law the bar is "really high."
"To reach the threshold where governments can be held responsible for environmental damage, it has to be serious and long-term damage to the environment before it can be said to be a war crime. And the only time this bar has been crossed or the threshold was in 1991, when Iraq set fire to hundreds of oil wells in Kuwait," he said.
The United Nations Compensation Commission ordered Iraq to pay Kuwait some $3 billion for the environmental damage it caused during the 1990 invasion, as part of its $52.4 billion war reparations package.
Many activists are also concerned that more unnecessary damage is being done in the name of the war effort.
An investigation by the European Union in 2017 and 2018 into Ukraine's forestry sector said its forestry control system was "not working properly."
That report, released in 2020, found that evidence on the ground "points to a culture of pervasive corruption and illegal logging."
Ukraine's national watchdogs have largely suspended their environmental protection work because of the war.
Kravchenko told CNN that this could lead to the exploitation of national resources.
“We know that the Ukrainian forest rangers are cutting down the forest and the explanation is that it is for the needs of the army. But is it for the needs of the army or for the needs of the corruption that exists in the forestry industry? everywhere," he said.
Back in Irpin, nature slowly defends itself.
Alongside the wreckage of a burned-out Russian armored vehicle, green shoots begin to sprout on a damaged tree.
The lilac bushes outside the houses along the road through the forest are bursting with color.
The huge exodus of people from the capital, combined with acute fuel shortages, means that, paradoxically, air quality in the region is now better than it has been in years.
"Nature is, as we say, the 'poor sister,'" Bondarenko said.
"We think of nature last. First of all, we think of our lives and the lives of our loved ones and our friends and other people, then we think of our homes and jobs and so on, and then at the bottom of the list , we think about nature. I think we have the opportunity, despite the war, to make cardinal changes in our attitude towards nature, environmental protection, energy and our use of green resources," he added.
The city of Irpin takes its name from the Irpin River, which meanders through the region before emptying into the Dnipro.
"The river played an important role in the defense of Kyiv," Bondarenko said.
"Our armed forces blew up bridges and were forced to open dams to flood the Irpin and prevent invaders from crossing it on pontoon bridges and reaching Kyiv."
When the army opened the dam on the Irpin River in Demydiv on the second day of the war, vast ancient wetlands that had been desiccated during the Soviet era returned to their original state, helping to protect Kyiv in the process.
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