Swimming in Dangerous Waters

While debates rumble on regarding a national pantheon and Poland’s threats to block Ukraine’s EU accession should the monument include the graves of the 20th-century Ukrainian nationalist leaders Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, plans are underway, in the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi district of Odesa region, for a different kind of memorial burial site. It will be a pantheon for Black Sea dolphins and it is slated for construction within the Tuzlivski Lagoon National Reserve – a unique area comprising forests, steppe, and 13 lagoons, connected to the sea, which attract a vast array of wildlife, including dolphins.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The idea for this pantheon was suggested by Ivan Rusev, a prominent ecologist who works at the reserve. Since 2022, Russian drones have frequently sparked fires inside the protected area. However, the most severe impact of Russian aggression in the area has been on the Black Sea dolphin population, which has plummeted catastrophically. Rusev estimates that over 50,000 dolphins have fallen victim to the war over the past four and a half years. In just the last couple of months, 89 dead dolphins have washed up on the shore. Apart from falling victim to the hundreds of Russian drones that explode into the sea before reaching the Ukrainian coast, vast numbers of dolphins have succumbed to marine pollution caused by fuel oil, gasoline, sunflower oil, and other liquid commodities. These substances spill into the sea whenever Russian missiles and drones destroy storage facilities at Ukrainian sea and river ports. Other Topics of Interest Russia Must Answer for Crimes in Crimea, Zelensky Says Zelensky linked Crimea’s occupation to Black Sea security and offered reciprocal de-escalation to protect shipping and food exports. Furthermore, intensive underwater radio surveillance by Russian warships and submarines – and specifically the use of powerful sonar systems – disrupts the dolphins’ ability to navigate underwater. This, too, leads to the deaths of these Black Sea cetaceans. The remains and skeletons of dead dolphins found along the shore have already formed mounds at several locations within the protected coastal area. Once the planned pantheon is built, some of these remains will be interred there in a mass grave dedicated to the animal victims of the Russo-Ukrainian War. It will be the first monument constructed within the vast nature reserve. Murky political waters Yet the war has made it difficult for many Ukrainians to dwell on environmental damage, however grave. Survival under constant shelling and developments at the front naturally come first. At the same time, another threat to the country’s resilience is drawing growing—and increasingly sarcastic—attention: corruption, and the struggle to contain it. Recent events have served as a reminder that Ukrainian politics often bears a closer resemblance to unsophisticated TV entertainment than to a platform for ideological confrontation and debate over how best to organize the economy and public services. The process of exposing corruption and dealing with suspected perpetrators also displays a show-business dynamic which overshadows the legal procedure. However, theatrical as the scandals may appear, their effect on the political environment is real and they stir up the waters of government, making them almost impossible to navigate safely. The saga of Operation Carthage, which led to the arrest, on corruption charges, of a deputy prosecutor general, is being followed like a soap opera popular for its most obvious plot twists. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko – who had denied involvement in his subordinates’ corrupt activities – promised to resign following a conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky, but then he vanished from the media spotlight for a week, during which time no official charges were brought against him. Kravchenko remained in his post and was not called in for official questioning. Then, having authorized, for himself, a business trip to Paris, as prosecutor general, he left the country using a VIP taxi service. That same night, his wife also departed Ukraine via the Shehyni border crossing. Kravchenko did not arrive in Paris, and having spent four days in lively speculation as to whether Kravchenko would return home from his “business trip,” Ukrainians began asking themselves who would be the next top civil servant allowed to flee abroad before his/her actions were investigated by the proper authorities. It is hard to imagine the now ex-prosecutor general turning up in Kyiv, but were he to do so, he would almost certainly stand trial. However, Ukraine’s judicial system is not accustomed to being harsh on corrupt former officials, and Kravchenko would be unlikely to face imprisonment. What is more, if he were tried by judges from Odesa or Odesa region, he would have absolutely nothing to worry about. That judicial leniency has an especially Odesan variation. Since 2021, for minor, non-violent offences, judges in the region have regularly handed down suspended sentences that include a requirement to read a list of fiction books selected by the judge—usually classics. Two teenage thieves received such a sentence in 2021. During their trial, the judge at the Malinovskyi District Court noted that the defendants were barely able to articulate their actions coherently and displayed a remarkably limited vocabulary. In view of this, the judge ordered them to read works by Mark Twain, Jack London, and the Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko. Since then, the reading requirement has been expanded to include writing a 500-word essay on each assigned book. The most recent sentence of this type was handed down just a few days ago at the Dobroslav District Court in Odesa. A Russian-speaking resident, who had used the internet to justify Russian aggression and to promote the idea of ​​Russia occupying Odesa region, received a suspended sentence. The ruling required her to read two adventure novels by the Ukrainian writer Ivan Bahrianyi (1906–1963) and to read and provide written commentary on the Budapest Memorandum – a document signed by the US, the UK, and Russia, under which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal to Russia in exchange for guarantees regarding its security and territorial integrity. One wonders which titles the Odesa courts might include in the reading list for a wayward prosecutor general. But beyond these darkly comic courtroom remedies, the region remains exposed to the far more immediate dangers of war. As the shipping industry mourns the death of the Ukrainian captain of a cargo vessel recently hit by a Russian missile off the Odesa coast, we can only hope that the dolphin community migrates away from these dangerous waters a little earlier than usual this autumn. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.