At the next session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the issue of environmental safety in Crimea temporarily occupied by Russia will be considered, Deputy Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in Crimea Tamila Tasheva has said.
“Within the next PACE session (and our permanent parliamentary delegation to the Council of Europe is preparing for this meeting), the issue of environmental safety, the environmental situation will be raised,” Tasheva said at a press conference in Kyiv on Nov. 5.
She also said the issue of the deterioration of the environmental situation in Crimea was raised within the constituent summit of the Crimea platform, which took place on Aug. 23, and remains one of the priority topics of the Crimea platform. In addition, Tasheva said the issue of the environmental situation in the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol is indeed an extremely important issue for the representation of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
“We are constantly monitoring the situation in the environmental sphere on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. We have identified a significant number of facts of the destruction of natural reserves, illegal mining, a number of other violations by the occupying country. We systematized this information and transferred it to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, on the basis of which the relevant criminal proceedings were initiated or the existing ones were supplemented,” Tasheva said.
According to her, the factors that significantly affect the deterioration of the environmental situation on the territory of the Crimean peninsula are the activities in the north of Crimea of the Crimean Titan plant and other chemical industry facilities, which are the largest air pollutants in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea.
Other such factors are the intensive selection of groundwater by the occupation administration, the destruction of objects of the natural reserve fund, including through the extraction of minerals on their territory or in close proximity to them, pollution of the Black Sea, including due to combat training and daily activities of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, other military formations of Russia, and the implementation of major infrastructure projects.
