Tatyana Linetska comes from the seaport city of Kherson, which is directly affected by the breach of the dam. "I grew up there and was able to watch how the dam was built," she says at the protest in Bonn. She has a house and a small garden there. On her cell phone, she shows pictures of the garden sent to her by an acquaintance - who has taken care of it since Linetska started living in Germany. "Now everything is destroyed," she says with tears in her eyes. She says she learned from local friends that pets had drowned and that the water level is now about 2.7 meters. Some of her friends who live on Russian-occupied territory had to flee to the roofs of their houses and, according to Linetska, are not being evacuated. On Ukrainian territory, the situation is different.

Nadiia Kulchytska describes similar scenes: At the homes of people she knows in Kherson, the water is up to the roof. "They were still able to save a few goats," the Ukrainian woman reported at the demonstration. Within five hours, the family had to leave their home to flee from the floodwaters. She has been living in Germany for a little more than a year, before that she worked in a youth center in Ukraine. "I often took the children on little excursions to the banks of the dam," she recalls. She has also been to the national parks and reserves, which are now all flooded.

Anastasia Shkarupa is also concerned about the damage to nature: "How can someone do something like this? This is a huge catastrophe for people and for nature," she says shaking her head. Many posters speak of "Ecocide": For the Ukrainians in Bonn, the dam break represents ecocide, i.e. massive destruction of nature. Again and again they chant the slogan "Stop ecocide".

"This hurts us so much when we see our fellow countrymen being killed," Olga Demydova, one of the organizers, tells GA. She says she is sure - as are the other demonstrators - that Russia is behind the blowing up of the dam. That's why she and her fellow citizens are demanding that the entire world community support Ukraine even more in the wake of this alleged attack. "We want to emphasize that here at the demo," she says. She also says that Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO in order to protect its civilian population. In recent days, she says, numerous people have approached her because they felt the need to rally after the dam broke. "That's how so many people came together here today so spontaneously," Demydova says.

(Orig. text: Marie Schneider / Translation: Carol Kloeppel)