Sam Greene
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you’re joining us from in the US, Europe, or around the world. My name is Sam Green. I’m the Director of the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis here in Washington. And it’s my privilege to welcome you to this rapid reaction discussion of the impact and aftermath of the Nova Kahovka dam destruction. We’ve watched in horror the destruction of the Nova Kahovka dam the flooding of countless villages, towns, and cities the loss of life adding to the grim tally of Russia’s illegal and already brutal war. In Ukraine, the destruction of the dam on June 6 led to the flooding of some 600 square kilometers of land, the evacuation of thousands of civilians, and an uncertain number of fatalities. Russia, meanwhile, has weaponized the chaos deliberately attacking evacuation and rescue efforts and slowing the progress of Ukraine’s counter-offensive. The impact of the disruption of the dam, however, is far greater than just the local and immediate consequences to help us unpack the military, human and economic, and environmental NGOs’ strategic implications of this atrocity. We are joined today by an excellent panel. Joining us from Ukraine is Dr. Hanna Shelest non-resident Senior Fellow in the Transatlantic Defence and Security Program here at CEPA as well as director of security programs at Ukrainian Prism and editor-in-chief of Ukraine Analytica as well, we have Olya Korbut a democracy fellow in residence with us here in the Democratic Resilience Program at CEPA an analyst on sanctions and the blacks at the Black Sea, Indian Institute of Strategic Studies, again in Ukraine. And last but not least, Ambassador Kurt Volker, Distinguished Fellow at CEPA served as US Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations from 2017-2019. And US ambassador to NATO from 2008 to 2009, we’ll do a quick round of the panel to get the conversation started in that order. But I would note for those of you who are joining us, online and live, that you can ask questions, there should be a link up on your screen to the slideshow tool. But to start us off, I’ll hand the floor to Dr. Shelest, Hanna. What should we be paying attention to at the moment when it comes to the dam?
Hanna Shelest
Thank you very much, Sam, for the introduction. And for the time the discussion that we have today. That is probably the first thing that we really need to pay attention to. That is the problem of complexity. That’s usually in the news. You see either the humanitarian side of the tragedy, a little bit of the economic side or the military out, was it worse of doing this or something like this, and just a few of those who are really looking at the situation in complex and that is from what I would like to talk because definitely the question number one that we are trying to answer. Does Russia gain anything from these explosions? Will it slow down the Ukrainian counter-offensive? will it influence the Ukrainian counter-offensive or not? And that is the issue that we definitely have over here. So now we see that it doesn’t have significant changes because looks like the main turgid points have been more on the east on the northeast of the country rather than on the south and the latest raided villages are in that direction. But still, definitely we need to understand all those consequences, and how that can influence the liberation of the Kherson region, which is so close, and now they have a military, for example, equipment will not be able, for some time to reach those points, it doesn’t mean that it will prevent the counter offense in that direction, it just the slowing down, because the summer, and if the weather is sunny, definitely the drying of the land is happening much quicker than we would speak, for example, in autumn. But we can speak more about the military, like why it was beneficial for Russians or why Russians did it. The second group of consequences is definitely pure humanitarian consequences. That is all that tragedy, all those, the fact that it is a war crime. And let’s be honest, according to the Geneva Conventions, it is prohibited to blow up the dams. And especially when you have at settlements over there, you saw all these tragic pictures, we’ll do have the first numbers about that people. And here are the humanitarian situation, we need to emphasize two things. One is the general consequences of all those people trapped and left without fresh water without their houses without their belongings needing to have been evacuated. But also, the problem is that Russians are not doing the equation from the villages that are in their control territories. And we already have our problem, first of all, a lot of dead corpses reported visible by the drones, for example, but we cannot do anything because Russians are not doing the equation. But even those who try to be evacuated to the Ukrainian-controlled territories, or at least further are not allowed, we already had several cases of people being shot until death just in their backs or cases that people are allowed to leave the flooded places only in case they have a Russian passport. So that is the clever, clear case of the war crimes of the division of the people in this situation. And we can go further with all the stories and details. And the third group, is the social economic consequences of this because the flooded lands are, first of all, the total degradation of agriculture and this region is agricultural. So we can speak about the long-term consequences for the crops for the food security for the all of the agricultural products that been produced in this region, tomatoes, watermelons, we’re speaking about not a real the big amount of all these products that will have an impact not only for Ukraine, we’re speaking about the absence of water for the region. And in general for agriculture not only at the planet’s territories, but all the south are for your saunas, degrees regions because they are dependent on the water that had been coming from their cup of car Alex station. And we’re speaking about the water necessary for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants for the cooling of the occupied nuclear power plants. And we’re speaking about the water that has been delivered from these Kahovka electric hydroelectric stations to the other metallurgical manufacturing out within that region. So if we already speak about the military and humanitarian consequences, we are now just starting to talk about the social-economic consequences of how it will change the economy of the social well-being of food security, not only of the region affected, but of Ukraine, and let’s be honest, not only of Ukraine, because food security, that the issue that we all nuclear security, that the issues that will go far beyond the borders of Ukraine.
Sam Greene
Thank you, Hannah, for that. There’s a lot to unpack there. And we’ll get into much of it. But let me hand over for the moment to Olya, to also broaden out the scope a bit in the Black Sea context.
Olya Korbut
Yes, thank you, and good morning to everyone. So we can only roughly imagine the economic, ecological, and human losses from the destruction of the Kakhovka down by Russians. And we’ll get a real shot when the water level will become lower, which will take up around 10 to 14 days in some flooded areas. So we will see the consequences of this catastrophe not only in Ukraine but also in other Black Sea countries. As a result of the destruction of the dam, a giant toxic wave is flowing down the Dnipro River into the Black Sea thousands of tons of chemicals, poisonous soils long-term materials with heavy metals, and sewage waste washed away cemeteries and cattle burial grounds. All these toxins, infections, and pathological microbes will pour into the Black Sea and when will continue to grow up there, significant changes in the chemical composition of seawater samples have already been recorded in the waters of the Black Sea near the coast of Odesa. As the water there moves counterclockwise, Romania, Bulgaria, and even Turkey might be next, who will face the consequences of that? But ecologists might say much more about this. And we are basing these views on the data we have now. But we still have an occupied nuclear power plant that we that was pulled from the Kakhovka reservoir, as Hanna said previously, and now there are serious problems with cooling. Plus, the station is full of monkeys with grenades. The nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia is the largest one in Europe. Imagine the consequences of leaking at least a small portion of the radiation from it, it will absorb into the water and go downstream into the Black Sea. Blowing up the Kakhovkva dam is, first of all, using nuclear weapons by Russia. Without the four values of nuclear weapons. When Russians leave the occupied territories, they destroy everything behind them. They remove all equipment from factories and take away light bulbs, toilets, secondhand shoes, etc. Everything that can be removed and taken away, they will take it away. In addition to this, they will burn forests, they will destroy all infrastructure, and blow up all existing tanks with toxic substance substances. I’m talking about the future of Crimea now. It doesn’t know from most sources that now all the equipment of the detent plant everything related to the production of titanium dioxide is being taken out. Now, what remains there is a force of a highly explosive substance and a settlement leg for long-term waste from the production of titanium dioxide, there is a high possibility that Russians will use it as a chemical bomb. Therefore, both Ukraine and other Black Sea countries should prepare to eliminate the consequences of this in the Black Sea. And as Hanna said earlier, I will also add the huge irrigation system of the agrarian south of Ukraine has been lost. Therefore, this year’s already meager export of the Ukrainian harvest will be even in an even more difficult situation. And it’s in long-term perspective that that’s not only for one year. And I want, to emphasize also that there are a lot of constructions in media like the dam is damaged. The dam has collapsed as if the dam collapsed by itself. But this catastrophe has an author, it’s Russia, and Russia is responsible for what happened. And this is not just a flood, no natural flood can be compared to the level of the disaster the resident of the Kherson region is facing now. And the Kakhovka dam was blown up by Russia. Thank you.
Sam Greene
Thank you, again, a lot to pick up on there. So we’ll come back to that. I would also remind people again that you can go online to the link on your screen slideout doe slash CEPA to ask questions for the panel. But before that, let me hand it over to Ambassador Volker. Kurt helps us see this in an even broader geostrategic perspective.
Kurt Volker
Well, yeah, thank you very much, Sam. And I think both Hanna and Olga made excellent points. And so I’ll repeat a few of them. As well as maybe put it in a little bit of context. The overall picture here is that Russia is becoming aware that it is losing the war. They are not able to advance on the ground, they exhausted themselves, and that last ditch effort Bakmut, they have resorted to just shelling Ukrainian cities, you know, missiles and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities, because they’re not able to do much else. And Ukraine, meanwhile, has prepared a very capable force well trained, well equipped in order to launch these counter-offensives that we’re now seeing. So it’s in advance of anticipating Ukrainian counter-offensives that Russia went ahead and blew up the dam. And the purpose of this is to flood the area below the dam, meaning that Ukrainian forces even if they were thinking about transiting or crossing the Dnipro River, south of the dam will no longer be able to consider that as an option, at least for a long period of time. This will then channel any Ukrainian forces to go east, north of the dam. Now, as Hanna said, this is still not that significant. But the Ukrainian forces are already east of the Dnipro River North of the dam, and they’re fighting on the front lines in Donbass and protecting Kharkiv. And the main efforts seem to be probing right now, using only about 25% of the force. They are the new forces. They’re not deploying all of their new forces yet. They’re probing in the east, and they’re probing in the south, from Central Ukraine east of the Dnipro River. So the fact that the Russians did this, yes, there is a military purpose to it. But at the same time, it’s not that significant militarily. It is, as Olya said, a humanitarian and an ecological disaster. And a man-made one done by the Russians for no good reason that people will point out in order to sow confusion, that oh, well, the Russian forces on the east bank of the new Dnipro River were more affected by this than Ukrainian forces. So the Ukrainians must have done it. That is a logical way of thinking that is alien to the Russian military. The Russian military doesn’t really care about its own people, and it doesn’t really care about the consequences of destruction. It is really acting out of a bit of desperation now trying to retain whatever positions they have. And it leaves little doubt in my mind that they were responsible both for, mining the bridge a long time ago when they first took it, and then detonating it. When we saw that happened last week. I think as far as where this goes from now, we have seen even with the probing attacks, that the Ukrainians are making some successes in recapturing some villages. This may have taken everybody, both the Ukrainians and the Russians by surprise. And I think the Ukrainians are going to keep this up a little bit, in order to see where the best opportunity would be for a, harder or more full-scale, push through the front lines at some point, or maybe in a couple of points. We’ll see that play out over the course of the summer. So I’ll pause there.
Sam Greene
Thank you very much, again, lots to pick up on, I would once again invite people to post questions to the chat slide go, slash CEPA. But for the moment, Hanna come back to you. As Kurt was saying, and as you said, you know, there are military consequences to this. They’re not catastrophic. But sticking with that, is this, you know, to your understanding something, obviously, that Ukraine would have wanted to avoid? And would rather have not seen Russia do but it must have been somehow within the calculations that Russia could do this. Would this have been something for which Ukraine would have had contingency plans militarily? Or otherwise?
Hanna Shelest
I’ll probably respond to your question. We need to return back to April the previous year, because the dam originally been mined, and the first information about mining it we received back in April 2022. Because the Kakhovka was one of the first places occupied back at the end of February. And it’s been under effective control since then. So well. That was the first intention of the Russian Federation overdue to have these slow bombs made from the hydroelectric stations. Then after Kherson city was liberated and Kherson is just across from Kakhovka. In autumn 2022, we received additional information that Russia and that is not intelligence information because Russia has been openly posing and talking about these that the mined even more the pillars of the hydroelectric station of the damage, so to prevent and threaten Ukrainian forces from further counter offense, because that’s time considering how quickly or proceed quickly their counter offense happens in Kherson city itself. So definitely Russia has been expecting that the counter offense will continue in the south. The winter weather prevented us because the soil around that region is not very stable. It is it’s necessary to be very dry for heavy equipment. So that’s why by spring that is the constant expectation from the Russian side that the counter-offense should start there. We monitored the social networks and when they’ve been discussing where Ukrainians should counter offense, they weren’t Oh speaking about the military, for example, they definitely, spoke about Bakmut, but they talk a lot about the Kherson region. So Nova Kakhovka became that first line of defense out for that. That’s why when the talks within the last two weeks started to intensify about the possible counter-offense from the Ukrainian side, that was all these media views expert views that when finally just starting, we understand that the Russians became panicking. And they needed to use any type of courses on how to prevent Ukrainians, to have three big counter offenses East Center and the Southwest. And here, at least, my speculation can be that originally they were not planning a big boom, that’s something of the miscalculations because a lot of their defense positions had also been flooded, that the idea probably was to make a small hole, quite a small hole. Yep. So to have a certain plot, why, because just in the need of the Dnipro River, we have small islands, and these small islands are occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. So Russians wanted to flood the small islands to prevent Ukrainians from adjusting closer or having any type of sabotage operation or coming closer to the right bank of the river. However, the situation that happened is usually with the Russian forces, the planning is not going to the implementation in the same way. And are they situated their forces over there? And we have these at our prime for now. So that’s why from the Ukrainian point of view, virtually, we’ve been prepared for these for sure. Because when you have the whole year, such critical infrastructure objects being heavily mined, definitely you are expecting a certain type of explosion or even an incident, you’ll also be ready for these where could we contain it? Could we do something to prevent it? Unfortunately, not? Because we couldn’t define it? Yes, it’s not that we could use some kind of air defense system or any other type of system because what the engineers are saying is that most of these mines, it was underwater. So in a position where we couldn’t reach if we are not at the territory of the hydroelectric station and the dam. That’s why most of the plans have been to save the forces Ukrainian armed forces so they to be ready in case the worst is going up to adequate from there, and to have Plan B, how to proceed with the de-occupation of these territories, in case this tragedy is coming. And in case these routes through the Dnieper River are becoming close to offer that. Thank you, um,
Sam Greene
I got for you a couple of questions, including some coming from the chat. One, you mentioned, right, that there are ongoing and potentially increasing ecological issues being caused by the flood, and the potential for more to come with the nuclear power plant and, and other issues. Is there any space? Is there any opportunity to actually begin some reconstruction and remediation? Obviously, not at the dam itself, but to begin, to address some of these problems? Or is the fact of war just going to make that impossible? And then the second question from the chat is, given that these are issues that affect the Black Sea as a whole, is there any evidence that some of the Black Sea littoral states you mentioned Romania, Bulgaria, potentially Turkey, obviously, NATO allies are, are stepping up and providing assistance?
Olya Korbut
Thank you so much. Well, the first question is, there is too early to talk about any reconstruction or rebuilding of the Kakhovka dam or the irrigation systems as we have. We have a war there, the area and active fighting zone. So there is no chance to do that in the nearest future. The until the victory of Ukraine and also we’ll need a huge amount of money and help and technologists to build another. Another dam is because the Kakhovka dam is not available to be renewed. So I’d say it’s too early to talk about that now, we have to focus on eliminating the consequences we have now and to think about what we can do to minimize the effects of the negative effects, which is doing in Ukraine and in southern Ukraine, particularly and in the Black Sea. Because also, as Hanna said, there were a lot of minds there, they are still floating down the stream and into the Black Sea. We’re now facing furniture, dead animals, and houses coming, coming up to the Odessa coast. So why not the weapons mines should not come to eat also? And we all know that the Black Sea is full of mines already because of the flogged Russian mines, and possibly Ukrainians, Ukrainian mines that were set up on the coast at the beginning of the war in previous times. So we have to focus on that now plus, plus, we will have another economic issue with damaging, constantly damaging the river transportation system in Ukraine, which is connected also to the Romanian transportation system through DanubeRiver. Ukraine has done a lot of work with deepening it’s part of the Dnipro River to increase the river cargo transportation, probably to add some possibilities for Ukrainian Grain Export through the river waterways, as we are very limited with our sea waterways. But now it’s even hard to talk about which harvest can we export now in the nearest few years. And the second question, it happened very, very unexpectedly for a lot of countries. So some NGOs and some private people they’re helping from all over the world. They’re saving sending boats, technologists, people, and humanitarian aid to the Kherson region. But we’d like to hear more support and more actions from our colleagues from other countries, and especially from politicians of our allies from Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, as they are our closest neighbors in the Black Sea region. And we all will share the consequences of this in the nearest future.
Sam Greene
Thank you. And indeed, Ambassador Volker. This has been compared to the detonation of weapons of mass destruction, a slow-motion nuclear attack as well, given the issues with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Has the Western response, in your view been adequate to the scale of the challenge?
Kurt Volker
No, certainly not adequate. And the first thing that I think has been missing from the Western government commentary is that they are not comfortable saying that Russia is to blame here. And I don’t understand why they’re trying to oh, we have to investigate. It could have been the Ukrainians could have been the Russians. And we have to find out what really happened. And my view, that’s kind of nonsense, because the only reason why this dam was blown up was because of Russian forces inside Ukraine, and attacking Ukraine, that if Russia had not attacked Ukraine last year in mind, this thing, it would never have happened. So it’s clear that this is Russia’s responsibility. And then second, there are two things that I think are missing also from the Western response, one of them is a much greater emphasis on exactly the issues that Olga was talking about the long-term Human Environmental ecological consequences, that this is really you as you put it, Sam, like a weapon of mass destruction. That is something that should get more attention and there ought to be more of an immediate response to that. I think people are overly intimidated by the war itself to realize that they could be acting more to respond to this today. Ukraine is a sovereign country. Whether it’s peaceful or most places are now on the front lines, there’s more that could be done. And then the second thing I think that they should be doing as well as issuing a warning because there’s more that Russia could do. And it could be this operation powerplant. It could be another. It could be things that we haven’t imagined. And so to warn Russia as well, that things like this will elicit a direct response, that they cannot go about committing war crimes like this unchallenged. I think all of those things should be part of the Western response.
Sam Greene
To pick up on that last point, also, one of the participants in the in-chat asked, you know, essentially are there other vulnerabilities, other aspects of critical infrastructure, other things that the Russians are holding? That, you know, given what’s been done at Kakhovka that we might expect them to weaponize the in the future? Essentially, maybe, and I’ll put this to you are there things that that we should be paying attention to? Now that we’ve seen this happen at the dam?
Hanna Shelest
First of all, we see that the Russian forces don’t have any limits. So we knew it before. But now we’re just having additional proof for this. So it means that any object of the critical infrastructure doesn’t mean will it influence or impact or affect their own forces or nodes can be potentially bombarded just for the sake of a certain moment. And unfortunately, we already have news from other directions, for example, in the Donetsk region, just yesterday, a small dam was also destroyed, we heard that several other small dams are prepared for explosions in the Asia region and that the mining is happening there. So it means that Russia saw the result. And because they are not sure about the line of defense, and understand that the network of the rivers and over the dance is quite widespread and that’s part of the country where they occupied and where their first line of defense is happening. So they are preparing them for further possible action. And it means that we have all these potential crises and potential incidents that can happen, but also that means that we are at high risk. So with the other types of critical infrastructure, not only electric stations hearing electric station, but I would pay attention to the plants with the potentially hazardous materials on them, as all are overdue spoke about the Teton, we knew we are under this dangerous place in pioneer in terms of the amount of the hazardous material that is stored there. But also if you go to the temperature of the Zaporizhzhia region that is having the taller G enterprises there. So you will have a lot of hazardous materials there. Some of them are in storage here, some of them as wasted potential, some of them because of the manufacturing. And all of these places are becoming or the slow-motion bombs, in case of necessity because more and more we see the Russian forces making their bases either nearby understanding that your prey will not be able to Shell these territories heavily like the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants. Yes, it’s not to control the energy production. It is because of the nuclear potential that you understand that Ukrainian armed forces will not use HIMARS against the territory of the Zaporizhzhia power plant. But everybody’s saying it about the ingyenes and the nuclear potential, but nobody’s thinking that the territory route in and out of the dark is also full of the hazardous waters of all those tanks with the water that have been cooling the procedures. So that is also dangerous places in case a big explosion is happening. So all those places, unfortunately, we’re speaking about hundreds of them as occupied territories that can be used potentially, by the Russian Federation. And if you see that there are a lot of Russian forces there. It doesn’t mean that this place is safer, as it happened with Kokhovka, the videos of the Russians trying to swim or to find any types of boards or sitting on the trees because they were not notified by their own commanders about the possible explosion. And our flooding is clearly demonstrating that it doesn’t mean at all plus illogical that these places are heavily mined with the anti landmines or with the IMT are a hoax called in English the demise of the Atlantic. operations on two platoon mines. And now after the flooding of Africa, we see plenty of them coming till there’s a cost to that is 140 kilometres. And we now have all of these come into our territory. So it means that any places any districts that vie in mined with these types of ammunition by the Russian Federation in the Zaporizhzhia region, are also becoming dangerous places because you can make either the explosion of them to prevent a person coming, or in case any type of the plotting or anywhere like these happening, you have these additional risks coming both to the civilian and to the village.
Sam Greene
Thank you for that. We’ve talked about the nuclear power plant a bit and it’s probably worth spending a moment on that there have been conflicting messages, obviously, there are very real things to worry about. It’s also been said that there is given that most of the reactors are not active that there are there doesn’t seem to be an immediate risk. I wonder if anybody can shed some light on that.
Kurt Volker
Yeah, I just wanted to say a few things. And again, Hanna and Olya may know even more, but one of them is that the cooling ponds that are there are still needed to keep the reactor in an idle state. And they are not immediately affected by the flood. But their replenishment maybe be affected by the removal of the water from behind the dam. So this is it’s a potential problem that may take out over a couple of months. But it’s something really to watch. The second is that my understanding is that the Russians have actually armed or mined the power plant and reactors themselves so that they could blow it up at any time if they want. Or if Ukraine is recapturing the territory, they could borrow it up remotely as well. So this is also something that is horrendous. Third, the IAEA is still there. They you know, are talking about people not responding to the humanitarian crisis below you know, the in the flooded area below the dam, the IAEA is on the ground at the power plant and keeping an eye on things. It is shut down and stable for now, but it is a very tenuous situation. And then finally, the Russians have not been allowing the Ukrainian staff to have the power plant operate normally. Everything from long shifts and fatigue to being put, put under Russian supervision where the Russians don’t know what they’re doing. There are a lot of problems in the way it is now being managed that also present risks.
Sam Greene
Thank you one other question coming from the chat open this up to anybody who wants to answer it to several panel members who mentioned that Ukraine will not be able to assault across the river for some period of time do we have any idea what that period of time might be?
Hanna Shelest
Maybe on weather a lot, you need to understand that water just to go down the expected time is around two weeks. But that is for the normal average conditions. Unfortunately, since yesterday, we have also had heavy rains in Kherson and around us so the whole house is under heavy rains. And it gives additional difficulty to these because it doesn’t allow the sun to our dry the land. And the most important is to drive land because this land is like a mighty type. So you really need to make a dry to be able for the proper movement, in case you need it. We see that at certain places the water is going down quicker than maybe expected for the good but the conditions there it’s not only water that we need to get out it’s not only dry lands that we need, but also the destroyed road infrastructure. If you see the videos from there, there are a lot of roads that because of these floods and mud and everything. Currently, they’re just with the destroyed country. So most of the machinery will not be able to move there. Now it is full of the other objects. So if we’re up to Odessa, we have the whole refrigerators coming with applause you can imagine what type of objects are clothed the teacher some seat here, so there are parts of houses there. Yesterday, by the way, we had the help of the house and We’ll be in Odessa. And that is here. So what is in all those territories? Well, it is more and more of these destroyed houses and different buildings around. And that’s also the thing that is making it more problematic plus those mines, that’s also something that we cannot say you the time with them first we’ll need to check the board’s before driving there. Because even if not the mind sweeper operation, but at least a certain unit coming in front and checking that you can drive the roads that there are not all of these types of hidden minds over there. Because we are speaking about quite a small object, starting from the Berto fly of this type to the three liters types of the mind that can be there. So it’s not something that you drive and you suddenly see and you can easily pass, why you really need to check out for safety reasons, the roads you’re going to try.
Sam Greene
Thank you, we’ve got about a minute and a half left. So I’ll give people a little bit of time just to wrap up with, you know, final thoughts on things that we our audience should be paying attention to, in the days and weeks ahead, in relation to Nova Kakhovka. And the whole complex of issues that we have been discussing. Maybe we’ll go in reverse order. So, Kurt, I’ll start with you.
Kurt Volker
I think the only thing I would flag for people, as they look ahead over the next couple of weeks, is that the international community is going to be getting together in London for the Ukraine recovery conference, the high-level focal point, and it is an opportunity for international donors to come up with ways to present talk about and then follow up on to actually assist Ukraine in dealing with the consequences of the flood, which of course will be important for rebuilding and strengthening Ukraine’s economic recovery.
Sam Greene
That’s a good point. Olya.
Olya Korbut
Yeah, yes, I’d say that in, in a couple of weeks, when the water will come down, become lower, we will see the whole field of the work we should do. And that will be more clear in our plans and visions on it. Also, we should, we should take all our occupied territories back before doing anything, because we can do we can rebuild anything in active during active fighting actions. So as well, for this, we need huge assistance from our allies from our alias, and our friends all over the world, we’re very thankful for everything the world is doing for us and that you are standing with us. But please, don’t give up. And keep staying with us in this in these hard times. Because it’s not about just Ukraine, it’s about the whole democratic values, European security, food security, and much more.
Sam Greene
Well put and last word, Hana is yours.
Hanna Shelest
Um, I would say that let’s follow the consequences of these tragedies, both in terms of the short term and the long term, because we will have more and more of the long-term consequences as well. Now for the short-term consequences. It’s not only that humanitarian aid, additional humanitarian aid that Ukraine unfortunately needs, starting from the restoration of the freshwater supply to the huge amount of the territory that now is lacking it and we’re speaking about territories up to capability to the restoration of the houses for the people that need to return there. But also the pressing of Russia and the United Nations of emigrating people from the left bank from the occupied territories. We asked the United Nations if they tried but Russia still didn’t allow the United Nations specialist to come there and help people with an emigration. But when we are speaking about the long-term consequences here, we will need a lot of expertise, because we are already discussing not only the restoration of the social economic life of the region because of this, but also environmental consequences. And now we hear a lot about the discussions about the Black Sea or what to do there, what consequences it will have, but also about the restoration of the dam itself. There are two big opinions and more expertise and more discussions will be needed. One is said that we need to restore so as to have the agriculture being for that region again, appreciate but we only have more and more of environmental opinion, saying that our Before the 1950s, we didn’t have any doubt, and that these damages these environments are not natural for these territories. And we need to return back to the original world that was safer, and more natural for these territories. So that’s why we already need to start thinking about these long-term consequences that will have both environmental and social-economic importance for the region.
Sam Greene
Thank you very much. I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave it there. But only for now. There will be a lot more to talk about and discuss. Please do stay tuned to see cepa.org and on all of your social media channels, please join me in thanking Ambassador Volker, Olya Korbet, and Dr. Shelest, and thank you to all of you for tuning in from around the world. Stay safe. Stay well. Stay with us.
