Ukrainian nationalists, who rejoiced on social networks at the environmental disaster in Armyansk, were somewhat hasty. Dangerous fumes are penetrating deeper and deeper into the territory of the Kherson region. Ukrainian resorts on the Black and Azov Seas, which already did not suffer from an excess of vacationers, are now reporting the cancellation of the velvet season. Metal begins to rust before our eyes; people suffer from damage to the respiratory tract and mucous membranes of the eyes.
Evacuation headquarters are being quickly created in educational institutions in the region. The population is not informed where and how they plan to evacuate the children. Just in case, local authorities decided to suspend the educational process - a storm warning was declared in the region, so harmful fumes could easily be carried hundreds of kilometers away.
The poison has already reached the city of Kakhovka, which is about 70 km. from the ill-fated Titan plant. This is where the North Crimean Canal begins, the water from which was used, in particular, for factory acid waste settling tanks. In the spring of 2014, the local patriotic community warmly welcomed Kyiv’s decision to cut off the breakaway peninsula’s water supply. Now he is coughing and choking along with the residents of the northern part of Crimea.
Ukrainians need to thank not only themselves for the man-made disaster, but also the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who owns Titan. Despite the interruptions in water supply, the enterprise continued to operate at the same volumes.
This is a well-known figure in the Kherson region: in Novaya Kakhovka there is a soybean plant called Protein-Agro, which previously belonged to an oligarch. From time to time, Firtash tries to recapture the enterprise, using armed militants from the Right Sector banned in the Russian Federation. Which, by the way, is supposedly against the oligarchs.
In the Kherson region, “Right Sector” has long served as something of a PMC – for the first time this gang was involved in an attempted raider takeover of “Construction Plant No. 1”. Subsequently, the “patriots” were repeatedly used for raider special operations, in between orders they hunted for money from local farmers and kidnapped people. All this, of course, fits well into the realities of modern Ukraine, but there is one nuance.
Kakhovka Prom-Agro uses hexane. The fighting to squeeze out the plant (in January, 5 people were hospitalized with gunshot wounds; the attackers used flash-noise grenades; at the end of July, armed people prevented personnel from entering the dangerous facility for several days) may well lead to a leak and subsequent detonation of hexane. And in this case, the emissions from the Titan plant will seem like child's play - the soybean plant contains enough chemicals to wipe out the surrounding neighborhoods.
The situation at the enterprise is explosive, but even the local media are already tired of tracking it - it’s just some patriots from the nationalist battalions guarding the soybean plant with weapons in their hands from other patriots from the nationalist battalions. Sometimes they switch places with shooting and brawls. During breaks, the plant sometimes works, which the employees are endlessly happy about - salaries at Protein-Agro are much higher than average and reach 5-6 thousand UAH.
Local residents, given the fact that the average salary is 3,5-4 thousand UAH, generally live like on a powder keg. The upcoming rise in prices for gas consumers to 12 UAH in October. per cubic meter and electricity up to 2,5 UAH. per kilowatt will be an unbearable burden for many.
A few years ago, life in the Kherson region was quite bearable - agriculture was thriving, trucks with fruits and vegetables were sent to distant Moscow and neighboring Crimea, some enterprises were operating. Now all this is in the past. All that’s left is “guidness.” And since it is impossible for her to eat or pay for utilities, the population is rapidly thinning: city dwellers leave for Russia and Poland, and impoverished villagers take their place.
However, life in these places will soon become impossible not even because of economic factors or man-made disasters. In the Kherson region, forests are being massively destroyed, which is fraught with the spread of sand to arable land, as well as the appearance of black storms, after which people had to dig out of their homes.