An environmental disaster in Moldova has Russia’s fingerprints all over it.
The Ukraine war on our doorstep is a constant threat. Contaminated drinking water is a dangerous new twist.
Russia’s war has unleashed a string of environmental disasters in Ukraine. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam led to extensive flooding along the Dnieper River in 2023; thousands of tonnes of oil have spilled into the Black Sea; and the war’s pollution of water, soil and air has caused long term harm to biodiversity as well leading to human deaths. These harms are now understandably but worryingly taking a back seat to Ukraine’s attempts to defend itself against Russian aggression.
The Nistru oil spill has shown Moldova how exposed it is, and how fragile a society can become without access to clean drinking water. The war next door, combined with the climate crisis, give us little reason to think there won’t be another ecological disaster like this. The only way to avoid is to start taking environmental security seriously. It has to be treated it as a critical national, regional and international priority.
