site.bta"StopEcocideUkraine" Photo Exhibition Marks First Anniversary of Nova Kakhovka Tragedy

The Bulgarian Environment and Water Ministry building at 22 Knyaginya Maria-Louisa Blvd. is hosting a photo exhibition titled "StopEcocideUkraine", the Ministry said in a press release on Thursday.

The exhibition, which opened on Thursday, is organized by the Embassy of Ukraine in Sofia with the support of  the Ministry and with the assistance of UAnimals, the all-Ukrainian humanist movement that is saving animals in the war zone.

The event is part of StopEcocideUkraine, an awareness campaign initiated by UAnimals and implemented with the support of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The campaign is intended to draw the attention of the global community to the devastating effects of the Russian ecocide committed on June 6, 2023, when the Russian invaders detonated the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant and flooded part of the Kherson Region.

"That was a premeditated and pre-planned crime," Ukraine's Ambassador to Bulgaria Olesya Ilashchuk said at the opening of the exhibition. She recalled that the exact number of the tens of thousands of victims cannot yet be established.

"Today, two days before the summit in Switzerland, it is very important that we together should do everything possible and impossible to prevent any further such disasters for people, the critical infrastructure and the environment," the diplomat appealed. She thanked the Bulgarian Government for supporting the efforts to achieve just and lasting peace.

The exhibition is taking place within the framework of Bulgaria's chairmanship of Working Group 8 "Environmental Security" of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Peace Formula.

"Bulgaria remains committed to the implementation of Ukraine's Peace Formula and, within the framework of Working Group 8, we will continue to make efforts for enlisting the international community behind the country's green restoration," said Bulgarian Environment and Water Minister Petar Dimitrov. He added that during the United for Justice Conference in October 2023 in Kyiv he gained first-hand experience of the suffering of the Ukrainian people.

The exhibition presents 26 photographs taken by the best known Ukrainian photographs that show the devastating effects of the crime committed by the Russian army: the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP and the disastrous effects for the local population, the environment, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture, and Ukraine's entire power industry.