Abstract
Russia is killing dolphins in the Black Sea. As part of its environmentally devastating military aggression against Ukraine, the Russian Navy’s indiscriminate shelling, mining, and aggressive use of sonar has wiped out between 1/5 and 1/6 of the Black Sea’s cetacean population, which consists of both dolphins and porpoises. A 2023 study conducted during a three month period determined that between 37,500 and 48,000 of these animals perished out of a population of 250,000 due to war related injuries—amounts egregious enough to portend eventual extinction in the Black Sea as the war continues. Even Russia’s land-based attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, in and of themselves war crimes, exacerbate dolphin casualties. “The destruction of the Kakhovka dam, . . . sent trillions of gallons of polluted water down the Dnipro River and into the Black Sea,” flowing out into the dolphin population near Odessa.