While animals don’t wage wars, they’re still victims of conflict

Amid the harrowing details of child deaths, starvation, and lost sons and daughters, animals are often obfuscated, but while animals don’t wage wars, they’re still victims of conflict.

This week, war-affected animals did make headlines after Ukrainian soldiers, out of grenades, resorted to throwing two beehives at aggressors. While awful for the bees involved, this incident seems to be one not of pre-meditated cruelty (as is farming bees to take their honey) but an act of despair in the face of their own extermination.

Every aspect of the war in Ukraine devastates humans and other animals alike. In 2022, it was revealed that Russia had been confining dolphins to aquariums to train them in military pursuits, perhaps even on suicide undersea bombing missions, and, in 2019, Norway accused Russia of training a beluga whale to act as a spy. To confine free-living marine mammals to tiny tanks and deny them basic sustenance as you train them to defy their nature and plant bombs or complete other cruel missions is disgraceful. 

As well as the use of animals as involuntary soldiers and weapons, countless terrified companions and wild animals have been displaced, injured, and killed these past three years. PETA Germany, alongside partners Animal Rescue Kharkiv (ARK), have worked under extremely dangerous conditions to rescue more than 22,000 animals, tending their physical and psychological wounds, organising paperwork and rehoming while also providing more than 3.7 million pounds of food and provisions for 2,500 animals in Ukraine each month.

Whether it’s forcing calvary horses to gallop into gunfire or exploiting the delicate noses of dogs and rats to sniff out landmines, using animals in conflicts in which they never enlisted is reprehensible. The animals aren't the ones starting wars – they claim no nation, pose no threat, and own no weapons – and they don't belong in the middle of human conflicts.

Mimi Bekhechi is Vice President at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for PETA UK and Europe.

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