Crime scene: The Black Sea. How the war is poisoning the water, killing wildlife and changing landscapes
On 19 July 2026, Odesa-based environmentalist and hydrobiologist Vladyslav Balinskyi was relaxing on the beach. It was a Sunday, warm and dry – too nice a day to stay at home. It was around 17:00 when he heard a powerful explosion. Smoke began billowing from a vessel about eight kilometres away – a distance he would later check on a map.
Then came another explosion. The final strike occurred after rescue workers had already begun approaching the damaged vessel.
That day, the Russians launched three Kh-59/Kh-69 cruise missiles at the Golden Leo, a bulk carrier sailing under the flag of Guinea-Bissau, that had departed the port of Chornomorsk loaded with maize. Eight crew members were taken to hospital and ten people were killed, including a Ukrainian pilot.
A week later, the Golden Leo capsized and sank in Odesa Bay at a depth of around 22-24 metres. The maize remained in its hold.
Ukraine's Economy Ministry and scientists warned of serious environmental risks from the sinking of the bulk carrier. A potential fuel leak could cause surface pollution, while the fermentation and decomposition of the grain could affect seabed ecosystems.
Having witnessed the attack, Balinskyi became even more convinced of two things. Firstly, he believes the Russian military's objective is not simply to stop civilian vessels but to kill as many people as possible – which, he argues, is the purpose of the tactic of double and triple strikes. Secondly, paradoxical as it may seem, he says Ukrainian strikes on Russia's shadow fleet tankers cause less environmental damage than Russia's destruction of civilian bulk carriers.
"I compared it with Operation MoLoChKa. Most of the vessels struck during that operation were disabled but did not sink. They lost propulsion, and there were no follow-up strikes that could have caused a major oil spill. In other words, the apparent aim was to put the vessels out of action without sinking them: they could no longer move under their own power but remained afloat. There were some exceptions – for example, one vessel caught fire and burned for about two weeks. But in most cases, the vessels simply lost propulsion without sinking or spilling their cargo," Balinskyi argues.
MoLoChKa, the operation Balinskyi is referring to, is an operation by Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces which, as of mid-September, had resulted in Ukrainian forces "hunting down" 285 vessels belonging to Russia's shadow fleet in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
The Russia-Ukraine war has long since extended beyond the mainland. The fighting is affecting not only the course of the war itself, but also the environment for years – perhaps even decades – to come.
Balinskyi, a researcher at Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park and head of the Odesa branch of the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine, is one of those tracking and documenting this environmental impact.
Russia has opened a criminal case against him and placed him on an international wanted list over what it calls "fake news" about the Russian military and damage to Soviet memorials in Odesa. Balinskyi himself is convinced, however, that the main reason is his professional activities. Among other things, he works with the Environmental Evidence Platform, which helps document environmental damage caused by Russian aggression, and is involved in investigating the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.
Ukrainska Pravda spoke to Balinskyi about how the war is changing the Black Sea, why some of its consequences may remain invisible for a long time, what is happening to the ecosystem following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, and whether we will only understand the true scale of the environmental damage caused by the war years from now.
When vegetable oil is just as dangerous as petroleum products
Before the Golden Leo, there was the Golden Lion. That was the name of a bulk carrier sailing under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda that was attacked by Russia in autumn 2024. It was around that time that Russia shifted from sporadic strikes on vessels in the ports of Greater Odesa to systematic attacks on participants in the maritime corridor and on port infrastructure. In some cases, the environmental consequences were extremely serious. [Greater Odesa is a logistical and industrial hub in Odesa Oblast that combines three major ports – Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi – ed.]
In December 2025, for instance, the Russians struck tanks containing vegetable oil, causing it to spill into the sea. Scientists recorded a slick covering 60 sq km and stretching for 25 km. "Oily patches were observed along the coast from Lanzheron Beach to Station 16 at Velykyi Fontan," the Ukrainian Scientific Centre of Ecology of the Sea reported.
"Imagine this: one morning, I suddenly start getting call after call from people saying something is happening to the sea. It's December, it's freezing cold, and they're telling me the entire sea is covered in some kind of yellow substance. The whole surface is yellow, and so is the entire coastline. Then they start sending me photos – and what I see is horrific. There are birds floundering in it.
People were taking off their clothes in that freezing weather to go into the water and rescue the birds. And it was all done entirely by volunteers," Balinskyi recalls.
Vegetable oil forms a film on the surface of the water that disrupts gas exchange and oxygen levels. Over time, it can sink to the seabed and form a dense layer that remains there for years.
Balinskyi has counted at least four incidents over the past two years that caused large-scale pollution of the sea. The most recent occurred in April 2026, when tonnes of sunflower oil entered the water following a Russian strike on the port of Chornomorsk.
In terms of some measures of environmental impact, the expert stresses, vegetable oil is even worse than fuel oil.
Spills of fuel oil and other petroleum products are another consequence of the war that is devastating for the sea. And Ukrainian attacks on Russian facilities are not the only issue.
Russia transports petroleum products in small tankers across the Sea of Azov before transferring them near Kerch or Taman to larger vessels capable of travelling onwards through the Black Sea. The very operation of this logistics hub creates a risk of pollution in the surrounding waters.
Balinskyi monitors the number and size of oil slicks using satellite data and says the situation has deteriorated significantly since the start of the full-scale invasion.
In December 2024, for example, two Russian tankers, Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, were caught in a storm and broke in half in the Kerch Strait. Several thousand tonnes of fuel oil spilled into the water. This year, as the sea warmed, Balinskyi observed significant releases of fuel oil from the wreckage of the tankers.
"You look at the satellite images and it seems as though the ships have only just sunk, because the plumes spreading from them are so large. There is a fairly stable cyclonic current in the area that carries the pollution directly towards us. Following the coastline, it's about 600 km from the site of the accident to Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park. Yet within a month, we were already finding clumps of fuel oil in the park. And we're still finding them today," he says.
The war's biggest environmental disaster
When Balinskyi saw what had happened to the sea after Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant in June 2023, he was stunned. He still considers that disaster the most painful environmental consequence of the war.
"You'd walk down to the sea and hear frogs croaking. Entire islands of reeds were floating in the water, some with roe deer stranded on them. You'd walk along the shore and come across a Danube crested newt – a species listed in Ukraine's Red Book – lying there. Everything that had lived and grown along the Dnipro had been swept all the way here. This was freshwater wildlife that couldn't survive once it reached the sea.
And there was an appalling amount of debris: refrigerators, pieces of roofs, trees, pillows. I didn't even know breeze blocks could float until I saw them washed up here. Later, the sea carried much of that rubbish away again. But it didn't actually disappear. A lot of it simply sank and is now lying on the seabed," Balinskyi recollects.
Read also: Everything you need to know about the Kakhovka HPP disaster
The enormous quantity of pollutants that entered the Dnipro-Buh Estuary and adjacent bays continues to affect the local ecosystem. Balinskyi is convinced that restoring it to its previous state is now impossible.
Shortly after the disaster, in July 2023, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers approved an experimental project to construct the Kakhovka hydroelectric complex and rebuild the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. Clearly, under current wartime conditions, the project cannot progress beyond the design stage. Balinskyi nevertheless criticises the idea of restoring the reservoir in the future, regarding it as a continuation of what he sees as the Soviet Union's damaging approach to nature.
In the three years since the disaster, the vast river floodplains known as the Velykyi Luh, which were submerged in the 1950s during the construction of the Kakhovka Reservoir, have begun to recover. Today, forests and meadows are spreading across the area. In some places, there are as many as ten trees per square metre.
This is one of the few pieces of good news to emerge from the disaster: not all of the dire predictions have come true. Three years ago, environmentalists feared erosion and dust storms, but nature's drive to regenerate has proved stronger.
The visible and invisible scars of war
Almost 100,000 bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins and harbour porpoises have died in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov since 2022, according to estimates by Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park. Dolphin carcasses occasionally wash up on the shore. In June 2026 alone, scientists found 56 dead animals in the area around the national park.
The problem is not limited to the enormous volume of chemical pollutants entering the water as a result of the fighting. Balinskyi points out that dolphins use echolocation to navigate and hunt. Military sonar and regular explosions interfere with their ability to find food and avoid danger.
Chemical and acoustic pollution are not the only traces the war has left in the sea. Some of its consequences can literally be picked up. The day before his interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Balinskyi saw a video of a boy swimming in the sea using a piece of foam from a Russian Gerbera drone as a makeshift boat.
During his own dives, Balinskyi sees enormous quantities of drone debris, mainly carbon-fibre wings and tail sections. These remnants are not the greatest danger, however. Mines and other munitions also end up in the sea, which are occasionally washed up on the shore by currents and storms.
This means that once the fighting ends, the seabed will have to be cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance before any broader clean-up can begin. Balinskyi says these consequences of the war will continue to affect both the marine environment and human life for decades.
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Which of Russia's major environmental crimes is the least documented and receives the least attention?
Balinskyi answers without a moment's hesitation: what is happening to the land along the line of contact – the way the war is changing soils and landscapes.
He has previously seen what happens to an area after phosphorus munitions are used.
"You have to understand: all the humus, all the fertile material in the upper layer of soil, is burned away. It's not simply a mineral component. It's a living ecosystem containing hundreds of thousands of different bacteria, soil-forming organisms, fungi, insects, crustaceans and worms.
After the impact of shells and extreme temperatures, after the blast wave has simply lifted all of this up and thrown it into the air, the structure and density of the soil change. Fine particulate dust is created, and its structure is completely different from that of soil. And beyond that, the landscape itself changes," he explains.
What does this mean? Even after the fighting ends and the battlefield has been cleared of mines, nature will be unable to recover there on its own.
Without human intervention, Balinskyi believes, these areas are unlikely to turn into either wild vegetation or steppe. Their only future will be desertification.
Rustem Khalilov, Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska
Edited by Susan McDonald