Zelenskyy speaks to New Zealanders about ecocide and Russia’s miscalculation

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on New Zealand to bring other countries together to counter the ecocide that Russia is committing in Ukraine, which is the eighth point of his Peace Formula.

Source: speech by the President to the Parliament of New Zealand, President’s Office

Quote: "Various dictators and aggressors always fail to realise that the strength of the free world is not that someone is big and has accumulated missiles, but that everyone knows how to unite and act decisively and sincerely, and that everyone makes their own unique contribution to the common cause.

Maybe it is time for your country to make just such a unique contribution. I am talking now about one of the points of our Peace Formula, which I proposed recently at the G19 summit held in Indonesia (...).

Firstly, I urge you to pay attention to the eighth point of our Peace Formula. The one about environmental security. Educated people understand well what war means for the natural environment. Your society is just that – educated.

A destroyed economy and infrastructure can be rebuilt. It takes years.

But you can’t rebuild destroyed nature. Just as you can’t restore destroyed lives."

Details: As of now, 174,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory are contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance, Zelenskyy said. 

The water area of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov is also contaminated with mines and has lost hundreds of thousands of living creatures who died as a result of the hostilities and the activity of the Russian Navy.

Dozens of rivers are polluted. Hundreds of coal mines are flooded. Dozens of the most hazardous enterprises, including chemical ones, have been destroyed by Russian strikes.

Three million hectares of forest in Ukraine are affected by the hostilities, the President said.

Quote: "All these and other manifestations of the Russian ecocidal policy will have direct negative repercussions for millions of people, for our region and neighbouring regions.

I am sure that your society senses the fragility of our world and how important it is for all people on the planet to pursue a rational policy in relation to our common home - just as [we should], by the way, in relation to our common values, on which the peaceful coexistence of nations is based.

And that is why I suggest that your country, your leaders, consider taking into account this environmental point of our Peace Formula. I urge you to show leadership within international institutions, in particular the UN, and on a bilateral level with other states, so that the world can see this challenge of the Russian war."

Details: Zelenskyy emphasised that there is no real peace "where any child can die from a hidden Russian anti-personnel mine", or where the consequences of war could be there in the form of poisoned groundwater that may destroy normal life in several countries, or where the consequences of ecocide have not been overcome.

The President called on New Zealand parliamentarians to support the Ukrainian Peace Formula and to start to unite the world for the sake of its eighth point, ‘Countering ecocide’.

Background: The Peace Formula proposed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy has 10 points: radiation and nuclear safety; food safety; energy security; the release of all prisoners of war and the return of deportees; implementation of the UN Charter and restoration of territorial integrity of Ukraine; withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and cessation of hostilities; prosecution of war criminals; countering ecocide; preventing the escalation of the war; and confirmation of the end of the war.

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