If Russia does not allow an international monitoring mission to assess the situation with chemical leaks and acid evaporation at the Crimean Titanium plant in the occupied Crimean peninsuala, Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy says that the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, should declare the incident a chemical attack.
“I call on international organizations, primarily environmental organizations, and other international partners to send an international monitoring mission with immunity to occupied Crimea to provide an objective assessment of the environmental disaster that occurred in the north of occupied Crimea, as well as identify a real threat to the entire region,” the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament said when opening a plenary session on the morning of September 6.
Parubiy emphasized that those affected by the leak on the peninsula are Ukrainian citizens.
Emissions of unknown chemical in the early hours in the north of Russian-occupied Crimea were reported when residents of the town of Armiansk wrote on social networks that their metal items (details of cars and fences, keys, utensils, jewelry and others) were covered with rust. Trees and plants turned yellow, and some citizens reported about health problems.
Acid from a reservoir at the Crimean Titan plant has been blamed. The sulfuric acid reservoir covers 42 sq km, it has been used since 1971.
The Russia-installed authorities of Crimea on September 4 announced that the level of sulfur dioxide in the air had exceeded the norms and paused the plant’s operations for two weeks – two weeks after residents began complaining of respiratory problems and the appearance of a mysterious oily substance on surfaces.
Children with mothers have been evacuated to Crimean resorts for two weeks. Meanwhile in Kharkiv, 15 children have been hospitalized as the result of contamination from the leaks, say local authorities.
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin has called the situation an environmental disaster.
According to him, this information was sent to international organizations of the United Nations, the OSCE, the World Health Organization and the Red Cross “with a view to document the facts of human rights violations,” as well as the Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (based in Kyiv) to initiate criminal proceedings against persons involved in the violation of the environmental rights of citizens in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and the threat to their lives.
