The ongoing war in Ukraine is inflicting catastrophic environmental damage across the Black Sea, decimating marine life, destroying delicate wetland habitats, and threatening ecosystems with decades of recovery ahead. While hostilities have sharply curtailed commercial fishing and poaching in littoral nations, military operations have introduced far deadlier pressures to the marine environment.
Ivan Rusev, head researcher at the Tuzly Lagoons national park in southern Ukraine, reports that war-related mortality has killed cetaceans at a scale hundreds of times greater than normal. In 2022 alone, approximately 50,000 dolphins died, and by 2026, cumulative losses exceeded 120,000—representing roughly one in four cetaceans in the Black Sea. The park itself covers 280 square kilometres of salty lagoons that serve as crucial stopover and breeding sites for migratory birds.
As apex predators, dolphins absorb toxins accumulated throughout the entire food chain, ranging from zooplankton to fish. Explosions, missile launches from warships, and military sonar systems severely disrupt their echolocation, destroying their primary survival tools for navigation, communication, and hunting. According to Rusev, disoriented dolphins quickly lose weight and resort to consuming their own blubber, which is already saturated with pollutants from wastewater, agricultural runoff, microplastics, and antibiotics. This self-poisoning compromises their immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to lethal respiratory tract infections from morbillivirus.
Environmental monitors in neighboring Black Sea nations—including Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkiye—have similarly observed spikes in strandings. Dimitar Popov of Green Balkans, Bulgaria’s oldest nature conservation group, noted that many stranded animals arrive in advanced states of decomposition, rendering net marks and other physical damage difficult to detect. However, Popov concurs that naval and submarine sonar systems severely impair the hearing and echolocation abilities of marine mammals. Conversely, Russian environmental monitors attributed the dolphin mortality to parasites and viral infections without providing further explanation.
The ecological strain extends far beyond cetaceans. The chronic damage was compounded by the catastrophic 2023 destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, which released roughly 18 cubic kilometres of water laden with heavy metals, machine oil, and fertilizer runoff. Furthermore, Ukrainian sea and airborne drone operations have sunk two submarines and three dozen Russian warships since 2022, including the Black Sea Fleet flagship, the guided missile cruiser Moskva. These vessels, alongside damaged tankers belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, have leaked toxic fuel and chemicals that form surface films, coating seaweed and poisoning molluscs, fish, and sturgeons.
Explosions and military traffic also disrupt avian species. Migrating birds traveling between Northern Europe and the Middle East are startled by military noise, impairing their ability to forage and complete seasonal migrations. At Tuzly Lagoons, startled flamingos have abandoned nests, allowing seagulls to feed on their eggs. The conflict’s sole ecological benefit has been a localized increase in terrestrial wildlife populations such as boars, roes, foxes, jackals, hares, and badgers, driven by the near-cessation of regional hunting and poaching.
While small mammals and insects may rebound within a few years following hostilities, marine experts warn that reviving the decimated cetacean population will require an estimated 30 to 50 years of sustained ecological recovery.
