As the Spanish language service of SwissInfo reports, concern is growing in Ukraine over the pollution of the Desna and Seim rivers, key rivers in the north of the country, which has been linked to a plant located upstream in the part of the Kursk region controlled by Russia and which has caused mass deaths of fish and may affect the quality of the capital’s drinking water.
The contamination was caused by the discharge of organic pollutants from a sugar plant in Tetkino, a town near the combat zone in Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal said on Tuesday.
“We do not have reliable data and the army cannot confirm it, but the available information suggests that this was an intentional action by Russia and not some kind of accident,” Oleksandr Los, acting head of the environmental department of the Chernihiv regional administration, told EFE.
More than 60% of the water used by the capital comes from the polluted river. In the worst case scenario, its water supplier may not be able to deliver quality water to some residents after the contamination reaches kyiv in the coming days, its deputy director warned.
Read the report on SwissInfo (Spanish) / read the Google translation to English
