An apricot tree blooms in front of a destroyed apartment building in Izium, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on April 6.Alex Babenko/The Associated Press
Lidiia Karpenko is a Ukrainian journalist living in Toronto and a member of PEN Canada’s Writers in Exile group.
My daughter dreamed of having a dog for a long time. And on Feb. 1, 2022, she finally got a chihuahua puppy, which she loved at first sight.
I remember that date because three weeks later, war broke out. Two weeks after that, I walked through the crowds at the train station in Kyiv, holding a dog carrier in one hand and my daughter’s hand in the other.
I never doubted for a minute that we would take the dog with us. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in Le Petit Prince, “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” I met many like-minded people on the train and at the station; I saw people abandon their suitcases on the platform to make sure their pets could make it on, and in our section alone, I counted two cats and three dogs, all looking as confused as their owners were.
War sharpens senses and removes masks. It is a kind of test of humanity, and the majority of Ukrainians have passed it. Many of us have extended helping hands to each other; as long as we can keep doing so, we remain human.
But we aren’t just supporting our fellow man. We are doing everything we can do to protect or rescue animals, plants, and nature at large, which is too often forgotten amid all the death and despair.
Russia is committing ecocide in the territory of Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian government, 600 species of animals and 750 species of plants and mushrooms have been affected by the war, 30 per cent of the land “may have been” studded with Russian mines, and a significant amount of the soil and water is contaminated. And while the war makes accurate data collection difficult, the expert panel of the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War estimated that the events of the first 18 months of the war released approximately 150 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – more than the annual emissions of Belgium.
Despite campaigns around the issue, ecocide is not a crime under international law. Ukraine, however, is one of only 10 countries in the world that criminalizes it. Ever since Russians reportedly blew up the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant last June, allowing polluted water to wash away everything in its path and killing hundreds of people, more than 20,000 animals, and tens of thousands of birds and fish, Ukrainian investigators have been putting together an ecocide case to bring to the International Criminal Court that would be a landmark first. Prosecutors have accumulated many alleged examples, including attacks on Ukrainian oil depots, shelling at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology’s nuclear facility, and the ecological damage from the mass death of almost four million chickens at the Chornobaivka poultry farm.
Frequent fires from Russian missiles and other weapons are also destroying the unique biodiversity in Ukraine’s nature reserves, including Askania Nova, the largest protected steppe in Europe at more than 33,000 hectares, which is now under occupation. Unique species considered to be near extinction have been reportedly removed from the natural conditions maintained in Askania Nova and brought to Russian zoos.
War spares no one, and during this fighting, both humans and animals have been under stress. Sonar from Russian warships in the Black Sea has disrupted dolphins’ ability to echolocate, which is how they navigate and find food; many dolphins have been washing ashore and found dead. Anton Ptushkin, the director of the documentary Saving the Animals of Ukraine, said he saw animals struggling with what appeared to be post-traumatic stress disorder. One day, he filmed a lion in a private zoo in the Donetsk region, which was having a psychological reaction to the explosions: It was not eating, its eyes were constantly watery and it walked with difficulty. But when Mr. Ptushkin visited the lion again after it was evacuated to Spain, he found that the animal had come back to life.
Ukrainians have proven defiant in protecting these animals. Volunteers delivering food and medicine to settlements under fire have returned with animals that were unfortunately abandoned, so that they can be adopted. To deal with overcrowded shelters, the volunteer organization ZooPatrul Ukraine built a new shelter for evacuated animals in Irpin in 2023, and plans to create a rehabilitation centre to provide professional medical care for war-affected animals. And remarkable stories have emerged from the veterinary clinics that do exist, including a black terrier that was fitted with a bio-integrated prosthetic in Kharkiv, so that he could walk again after his paw was mangled by Russian cluster munitions.
In return, animals have inspired Ukrainians. A Jack Russell terrier named Patron may be the most famous example; Volodomyr Zelensky awarded him the Order for Courage for locating more than 200 unexploded bombs and mines. And Gloria, a cat in the town of Borodyanka, became a national symbol after a Russian missile struck the apartment building she lived in, in February, 2022. Her owners tried to search for her, but no one was allowed to enter the bombed-out building. But after the town was liberated a month later, Gloria was spotted on the seventh floor. A rescue team travelled from Irpin to bring her down because they were the only people nearby with a ladder long enough.
But these good news stories are all too rare. In the same town, more than 300 dogs in a local shelter reportedly died of starvation or thirst during the occupation.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has had terrible and irreparable consequences for the entire global environment. Russia is committing a crime against the planet, and we have only one. Let us all prove our humanity and do whatever we can do to extend a helping hand.