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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Meets Greta Thunberg and Others to Address the War’s Effect on Ecology

Greta Thunberg, Swedish environmental activist, member of the newly created international working group on environmental crimes of Russia, speaks during a press briefing following the group first meeting in Kyiv on June 29, 2023. (AFP)
Greta Thunberg, Swedish environmental activist, member of the newly created international working group on environmental crimes of Russia, speaks during a press briefing following the group first meeting in Kyiv on June 29, 2023. (AFP)
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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Meets Greta Thunberg and Others to Address the War’s Effect on Ecology

Greta Thunberg, Swedish environmental activist, member of the newly created international working group on environmental crimes of Russia, speaks during a press briefing following the group first meeting in Kyiv on June 29, 2023. (AFP)
Greta Thunberg, Swedish environmental activist, member of the newly created international working group on environmental crimes of Russia, speaks during a press briefing following the group first meeting in Kyiv on June 29, 2023. (AFP)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Thursday with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and prominent European figures who are forming a working group to address ecological damage from the 16-month-old Russian invasion.

The meeting in the Ukrainian capital came as fighting continued around the country.

The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said two people were killed in the region's capital in a Russian strike that hit residences, a medical facility and a school where residents were lined up to receive humanitarian aid. Another person was killed in a morning strike on the village of Bilzoerka, the regional prosecutor's office said.

The presidential office said Thursday morning that at least eight civilians died in Russian attacks during the previous 24 hours.

Zelenskyy also met former US Vice President Mike Pence who visited Kyiv. Pence, an advocate of US support to Ukraine, is running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

"We appreciate that both major US parties, the Republican and Democratic, remain united in their support for Ukraine. And, of course, we feel the strong support of the people of the United States," Zelenskyy told Pence, according to the presidential website.

The working group on the environment includes Thunberg, former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Margot Wallström, European Parliament Vice President Heidi Hautala, and former Irish President Mary Robinson.

Zelenskyy said forming the group is "a very important signal of supporting Ukraine. It’s really important, we need your professional help."

Thunberg said Russian forces "are deliberately targeting the environment and people’s livelihoods and homes. And therefore, also destroying lives. Because this is after all a matter of people."

The objectives of the working group are evaluating the environmental damage resulting from the war, formulating mechanisms to hold Russia accountable, and undertaking efforts to restore Ukraine’s ecology.

In Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill met with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Vatican envoy for seeking peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Kirill, a supporter of the war, said: "It is very important that the Christian communities of East and West take part in the process of reconciliation," according to video circulated by the Russian church.

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Varieties

Firm Has No Plans to Salvage More Titanic Artifacts, Snuffing Out Legal Fight

The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, April 10, 1912, on her maiden voyage. (AP)
The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, April 10, 1912, on her maiden voyage. (AP)
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Firm Has No Plans to Salvage More Titanic Artifacts, Snuffing Out Legal Fight

The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, April 10, 1912, on her maiden voyage. (AP)
The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, April 10, 1912, on her maiden voyage. (AP)

The US government has scrapped its litigation against the company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic, noting that the firm no longer has expedition plans to the shipwreck that could break federal law.

The scuttling of the government's latest legal battle isn't necessarily the end of RMS Titanic Inc.'s attempts to enter the rapidly deteriorating ocean liner or to fetch more historic objects. The company said last month that it's still considering the implications of future expeditions.

But the US on Friday withdrew its motion to intervene in a federal admiralty court in Virginia, which oversees salvage matters for the world's most famous shipwreck. The withdrawal concluded the second of two legal battles in five years that the US has waged against RMS Titanic Inc, the company that has retrieved and exhibited the ship's artifacts.

The US filed its latest legal challenge in 2023 when RMST was planning to take images inside the ship's hull and pluck items from the surrounding debris field. RMST also said it would possibly recover freestanding objects from the room where the ocean liner broadcast its distress calls.

The US argued that entering the hull — or disturbing the wreck — would violate a 2017 federal law and a corresponding agreement with Great Britain. Both regard the site as a hallowed memorial to the more than 1,500 people who died when the ship struck an iceberg in 1912.

RMST ultimately scaled back its dive plans, stating that it would only take external images. The change followed the 2023 implosion of the Titan submersible, which killed RMST’s director of underwater research Paul-Henri Nargeolet and four others onboard.

The experimental Titan craft was operated by a separate company, OceanGate, to which Nargeolet was lending his expertise. He was supposed to lead the RMST expedition.

After RMST revised its dive plans, the US stopped trying to block that particular expedition, which produced detailed images of the wreck in September. But the government told the federal court in Norfolk last year that it wanted to leave the door open to challenging subsequent expeditions.

RMST, however, told the court in December that it won’t visit the wreck in 2025 and hasn't settled on any plans for future expeditions. The company said it will continue to “diligently consider the strategic, legal, and financial implications of conducting future salvage operations at the site.”

In response, the US withdrew its motion to intervene.

“Should future circumstances warrant, the United States will file a new motion to intervene based on the facts then existing,” the government wrote in a filing on Friday.

RMST has been the court-recognized steward of Titanic artifacts since it won salvage rights to the ship in 1994. The firm has recovered and conserved thousands of items, from silverware to a piece of the ship’s hull, which millions of people have seen through exhibits.

The company's last expedition to recover artifacts was in 2010, before the federal law and international agreement took effect.

The first federal enforcement was in 2020, when RMST wanted to retrieve and exhibit the radio that broadcast the Titanic’s distress calls.

US District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, who presides over Titanic salvage matters, gave RMST permission. But the US government swiftly challenged the plan. The legal battle never played out because RMST indefinitely delayed the expedition in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Smith noted during a court hearing in March that time may be running out for expeditions inside the Titanic. The ship is rapidly deteriorating on the North Atlantic seabed.