Coastal waters of Crimea under threat of environmental disaster - expert.

The condition of the coastal area of the Black Sea in occupied Crimea is approaching an environmental disaster. This was stated by the chairman of the management board of the NGO "Ukrainian Environmental Protection Group" Oleksiy Vasilyuk during the briefing "Crimea's environment: changes and losses during the full-scale war".

"In Crimea, the state of the coastal area of the sea is approaching an environmental disaster. The huge number of military ships constantly present near the Crimean coast has destroyed the deep water sewage discharges. The scale of sea pollution is so large that even the occupiers in many cities on the southern coast of Crimea have prohibited people from using the beaches," he said.

According to Vasilyuk, significant damage to the nature of Crimea was caused by the systematic large-scale military exercises of the occupiers, which began with preparations for a full-scale war in 2022. These exercises took place in the territory of the Opuksky Nature Reserve on the Kerch Peninsula. It is noted that the mountainous territory of the reserve became a target for missile strikes carried out by the occupiers.

In addition, the construction of the Kerch Bridge negatively impacted the nature of Crimea, as it blocked the Kerch Strait, which is an important place for dolphins and fish that breed in the Sea of Azov and migrate to the Black Sea.

Vasilyuk emphasized that the environment of Crimea also suffers from modern construction and the development of new military bases on the peninsula. For example, for the construction of the "Tavrida" highway, natural areas, burial mounds, and archaeological sites were destroyed. The highway has become an obstacle in the nature of the Kerch Peninsula, and the most forests were cut down near the last kilometers of this highway.