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Elena Sokolovska’s pink trousers and warm smile contrast with the dusty equipment, peeling walls and long corridors of her laboratory in Odesa, southern Ukraine. We are on the fifth floor of the Ukrainian Scientific Centre for Marine Ecology* (UkrNCEM), where this phytoplankton specialist works alone. Since the start of the war, most of her colleagues have left the port city. They are fleeing both bombs and empty coffers, given that their state funding has dried up.
With a steady hand, the biologist picks up water samples taken an hour earlier, and has a last close look at the greenish liquid. It has to be shipped to Kyiv before 6pm. “The post office lorry will not wait for us”, she sighs as she slips on her backpack.
In the capital, the vials will be delivered to Alexander Krakhmalny, a national authority on marine biology. He will be checking the samples for cyanobacteria, the blue-green microscopic algae that cause the water to change colour in certain areas of the Black Sea. Some varieties, such as Nodularia spumigena, are toxic to humans.
Sokolovska sees her day job as a way of helping in the war against Russia. Before leaving the laboratory, she tersely reminds us: “No photos of the windows, please”. A single snap could make the laboratory an easy target for a Russian air attack.
The samples are essential evidence for documenting “one of the greatest ecological disasters in Europe since Chernobyl“, as Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Andriy Melnyk, has described it. On 6 June 2023, at 2.50 am, the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper river burst in an explosion later attributed to Russian forces. The 240-kilometre reservoir upstream of the dam contained more than 18 billion tonnes of water.
A few days later, in condemning Russia’s war crimes, the European Parliament deemed the destruction of the dam to be a case of ecocide. Several hours after the explosion, the surge of floodwater devastated dozens of villages and caused the deaths of 58 Ukrainians. Contaminated by fertilisers, fuel and sewage, the water then spilled into the Black Sea. Ukraine estimates the cost of the disaster at €3.8 billion.
