Kiev (EFE).- Four days after an explosion that Kiev attributes to Russian forces blew up a dam in the territory they control in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities make an inventory of damage from a catastrophe that has spilled substances poisons into the Dnieper River and threatens to trigger an anthrax outbreak.
“Due to the destruction of the dam,” declared Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, “fuel depots, chemical warehouses” and “fertilizer warehouses” have been flooded by water.
Part of the products that were stored in these infrastructures have ended up spilling into the Dnieper, where the dam was located, or being deposited in the vast fields and flooded forests on both banks of this river that flows into the Black Sea.
“Pollution and poison from the flooded area quickly goes into the groundwater, poisons the rivers and from there enters the Black Sea basin,” the Ukrainian head of state said.
Anthrax Animal Graveyards
Zelenski has also warned of the flooding to the south of the dam of “at least two” plots of land where animals infected with anthrax were buried, an infectious and lethal disease that affects birds and mammals, especially livestock.
The emergence of the remains of animals buried with anthrax are one of the ways that outbreaks of this disease can occur, according to experts.
Anthrax can be contracted by humans, who, however, do not transmit it from one another.
The two flooded anthrax cemeteries are located, according to the president, in the Russian-occupied part of the Kherson province, bordering the Dnieper River and the most affected by the catastrophe.
Ukraine has warned of the lack of reaction to mitigate the disaster of the Russian authorities on the river bank they control.
Forests and dead animals
In his balance of damages, Zelenski has also indicated that in the “ecocide” 50,000 hectares of forest would have been flooded, of which “at least half will die.”
“Tens of thousands of birds and at least 20,000 wild animals are at risk of death,” added the Ukrainian president, who has accused Russia of turning the New Kakhovka hydroelectric power station into “a great grave for millions of living beings.”