Ukraine's Polluted Republic

Fairly recently, a tire company in the country of Ukraine buried some of its smoking rubber tire parts in the ground and left them there. Over the course of the next few weeks, the stench lingered in the air and made it difficult to breath for many inhabitants of the city.

A protest was organized, but when the protestors made their case public, the company was slapped with a fine and that was that. However, the fine did little to ease the environmental degradation that had occured and their practices didn't change.

'"They constantly bring old tires for processing, and putrid smoke hangs above our city all the time," Igor Kolodyazhnyi, a resident Makiivka near the rubber factory, said. "The air smells like cinders and chemicals. Living in such circumstances is simply impossible."'

This is the same country whose residents were hurt and scarred by the deadly Chernobyl incident from the early 1990's. The business practice of being environmentally destructive has become commonplace as well - many are used to the release of these chemicals into the atmosphere.

Ukraine however has reached critical levels of action. Nikolai Kostrov has stated that contaminated water and other resources are facing critical levels.

"At this time the area of garbage dumps exceeds the area of preserved territories in Ukraine," he said. "In the capital Kyiv, the most critical situation can be found at the water purification station in Bortnichi [a city suburb]. All sewage waste in Kyiv heads there. Impurities could break through the dike and flow into the Dnieper River if the equipment isn't updated quickly," he said.

What's next for the country of Ukraine? Complacency is the status quo, but how long will that last if issues are not resolved?

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