Where the Vile Things Are

Late last July, a strange truck arrived at Askania-Nova, a vast nature reserve on the steppes of Kherson Oblast in the Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine. The outside of the vehicle was emblazoned with lions and the grinning face of Oleg Zubkov—erstwhile children’s show host, self-styled “lion man,” and the proprietor of two private zoos in Crimea. Completing the epic, if haphazardly photoshopped, exterior of the truck was a Russian military propaganda slogan: “We don’t abandon our own.” But rather than carrying lions, the truck was transporting birds and sheep. And, much like the Russian generals using young men for cannon fodder, Zubkov was more than prepared to abandon his charges. What he was getting in return was both rarer and more valuable.

For well over a century, Askania-Nova, the oldest steppe biosphere reserve on the planet and the largest in Europe, has been home to a host of unusual and endangered plants and animals, including some native to the region and others imported long ago. Among the reserve’s rare creatures are the lumbering American bison; the Chapman’s zebra, with its occasional brown stripes and big, almost melancholy eyes; and the dun-colored equus ferus przewalskii, the world’s last remaining breed of wild horse. The animals are now caught in the middle of the largest land war in Europe since World War II.

With the help of a few men, Zubkov—who owns the Belogorsk Lion Safari-Park Taigan in the Bilohirsk Raion of Crimea and the Yalta Zoo “Fairy Tale,” not far from the Black Sea—shepherded the sheep from the truck into the pens at their new home in Askania-Nova. Kissing one of the smaller sheep, he praised the quality of the hay the animals would now be getting. “I’d eat it myself if I could afford it,” Zubkov told his followers on Telegram. “It is soft, tasty, it smells of mixed herbs.” “Of course,” he added, “there is no such hay in Crimea.”

In exchange, Zubkov was taking—with the tacit consent of Russia but in possible violation of international law, according to some—rare species from the reserve to fill his zoos. Between March and June 2024, he transferred three Ukrainian Grey cattle and ten Chapman’s zebras from Askania-Nova to Crimea. He has said he hopes to add American bison and Przewalski’s horses, both threatened species, to his collection, moving them from the semi-wild steppes to his inexpertly managed private zoos, the subject of numerous lawsuits and where people have not infrequently been attacked by lions. Viktor Shapoval, the Ukrainian director-in-exile of the Askania-Nova biosphere, emphasized the asymmetrical nature of these exchanges. Zubkov was taking rare, valuable species from a biosphere while mostly replacing them with common animals like “domestic goats, tame alpacas, and so on, which do not have the slightest conservation value,” Shapoval told me. These cuddly critters “could be used in petting zoos, but for a nature reserve they have absolutely no value. They are banal, widespread species.” 

Amid a war that has killed over five hundred thousand people and catalyzed the realignment of the United States with Russia, the fate of a few animals may seem immaterial. But since the invasion, the Ukrainian government has intended to make the Russian destruction of its environment a centerpiece of its campaign for restitution after the war, a potentially historic move in the era of accelerating climate change. “Ukraine is perhaps the first country to actively declare its intentions to punish the aggressor for environmental harm,” said Solomiia Baran, a lawyer with the Ukrainian environmental advocacy group Environment-People-Law.

And what is happening to Askania-Nova shows precisely what is at stake in the conflict as the United States turns from ally to bully while simultaneously descending toward Russian-style rule. In democracies, however fucked, public goods like national parks are presumed to be the purview of experts like Shapoval and animals considered to deserve a modicum of protection. In authoritarian kleptocracies, such assets inevitably become the target of plundering grifters, opportunists, and other arch predators.  

Askania-Nova was founded in the late nineteenth century by Friedrich von Falz-Fein, a nature-obsessed scion of German aristocrats. Falz-Fein inherited the land in what was then the Russian Empire from his stepfather Gustav. Gustav’s grandfather, in turn, had acquired the territory in 1856 from Czar Nicholas the First himself. Falz-Fein, whose passion for nature was ignited in his youth when his parents gave him an aviary, noticed in his adult years that his sheep were destroying the steppe habitat and decided to withdraw his land from commercial use. He fenced off his domestic animals and brought in a variety of exotic species while working to protect indigenous creatures.  

The first reports from Friedrich von Falz-Fein’s reserve reached Europe in the 1880s, emphasizing his unusual decision to let his animals roam freely. In 1898, he officially ordered the land’s ecosystem to be preserved in perpetuity. This was twenty-six years after the founding of the first national park in the United States, making Falz-Fein one of the environmental movement’s European pioneers. “In the wide, infinite steppes of southern Russia, where the eye searches in vain for a tree or a bush, lies a silent paradise for animals,” a German visitor wrote of Askania-Nova in 1914.

The idyll did not last. In 1919, the Red Army seized Askania-Nova from the Falz-Feins, nationalizing it and later turning it, under Stalin, to livestock production. (When Friedrich’s mother, Sofia-Louise Knauff, refused to evacuate from the family estate to Germany, she was summarily executed. Falz-Fein died the following year: heartbroken, the story goes, by the loss of his reserve.) In 1941, the Nazis, rampaging through southern Ukraine, looted the park’s library and museum and conscripted park staff for military service. But although some high-ranking Nazis took Przewalski’s horses from the park as trophies, the animals mostly faced benign neglect. In 1943, Askania-Nova was recaptured by the Red Army. It remained part of the Soviet Union until its fall, reverting to an independent Ukraine in 1993.

The park now stretches over more than eighty thousand acres of land and is a member of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was visited by some one hundred thousand tourists annually. It was also used as a semi-wild animal habitat and a center for research, conservation, and environmental education. A 2020 documentary, Askania-Nova Reserve, captures the isolating grandeur of the land and the intimate relationships that it fostered between animals, naturalists, and locals. Standing on a plain, the former director of the park, Viktor Havrylenko, shows visitors a group of wild zebras and namechecks “Matilda the camel, who has been with us since 1957.” He releases a falcon from his hand, crying, “Freedom!” A naturalist manually hatches a shelduck duckling. A young man moves from Askania-Nova to Kyiv in search of work and companionship; he comes to feel the loss of his home region like a wound.

Viktor Shapoval came to Askania-Nova during one of its intermittent phases of peace. A blond man with a stern, precise demeanor, he earned degrees from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Kherson State University and the Graduate School of the Nikitsky Botanic Garden at the National Scientific Center, Ukraine. After finishing graduate school in 2005, he arrived at the park as a junior lab researcher, completing his dissertation, about vegetation on the left bank of the lower Dnieper River in 2007. The following year, he was promoted to head of biomonitoring at Askania-Nova, producing numerous scientific publications. He stayed in the position until the Russians came.

After the invasion in February 2022, Kherson Oblast fell quickly. That October, the Russian military occupied the nearby village of Askania-Nova, requisitioning houses, seizing the arboretum, and digging trenches in the biosphere. The park even featured in Russian propaganda: Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military’s nuclear, biological and chemical defense troops, claimed that Ukraine, with American assistance, had been plotting to attack Russia with diseased migratory birds launched from Askania-Nova. (In December, Ukraine assassinated Kirillov, citing his orders to deploy chemical weapons on the eastern and southern fronts.) 

The initial flurry of military action was followed by a brief, blessed period of inactivity in Askania-Nova. For over a year, the park’s Ukrainian staff was allowed to continue their work, impeded only by secondary deprivations of war: military activity, a lack of funding, and some staff leaving the occupied territories. Shapoval, however, made it clear to the Russians that his loyalties lay with Ukraine and left for Kyiv. In February 2023, after Natalia Korinets, Shapoval’s deputy, also declined to cooperate, the Russian military searched her home, confiscated her equipment, and interrogated her. Fearing arrest, Korinets left the park as well. By this time, the remaining Askania-Nova staff were under intense pressure to work with the occupiers. Some resigned from the park but stayed on the land. Others left for Ukrainian-controlled territory or to the European Union. Shapoval remains in touch with those members of his staff who have not defected, supporting them where he can.

In a Telegram video, an Askania-Nova guide who appears frequently in Zubkov’s content described her motivation for relenting. “Someone asked me, almost reproachfully, ‘So, are you a patriot or something?’” she said. “And I always proudly say, ‘Yes, I am. In this sense, I am a patriot of Askania, of the reserve, of this place. And in general, I am a patriot of nature.’” The park has reopened to Russian tourists, but the numbers are far below pre-invasion levels. In 2024, Askania-Nova, which is behind the front line, had around ten thousand visitors, a tenth of the pre-war average.   

In March 2023, the Russian military installed a replacement for Shapoval: Dmytri Meshcheriakov, a compact, athletic man with a remarkably rectangular head. The ceremony that accompanied Meshcheriakov’s appointment was attended by Volodymyr Saldo, the vicious governor of occupied Kherson Oblast, and by Sergey Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff and, according to the Wall Street Journal, a liaison between the Russian dictator and Elon Musk. Neither Shapoval nor his staff knew who Meshcheriakov was—the name was unfamiliar from scientific or environmental circles—so they did some digging into Russian public records. Based on his research, Shapoval claims that Meshcheriakov is a former low-level functionary in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) who was fired for alcohol abuse, defected, and subsequently obtained Russian citizenship.

Meshcheriakov appears to have no background in the natural sciences. “They have a real problem with staffing,” Shapoval told me. “People who have an active civic position, who are patriots, who have, let’s say, above-average intelligence, have no intention of cooperating with these people. Simply put, all the mud that used to be at the bottom is rising to the surface.” Meshcheriakov is currently under investigation by the Strategic Investigations Department of the National Police of Ukraine for violating “the laws and customs of war.” The allegations include the transfer of rare animals to Zubkov.

With an apparatchik like Meshcheriakov now at the helm, the delicate ecology of Askania-Nova is vulnerable to mismanagement. Military activity, underfunding, and incompetence have already caused some damage. “Askania-Nova has suffered from numerous fires,” Solomiia Baran told me, “which the occupation ‘authorities’ did nothing to address.” Moreover, under Meshcheriakov, Askania-Nova is now ripe for pillaging. “It’s a business opportunity,” Shapoval said. “Oleg Zubkov’s collections are private, non-state collections, and since cooperation between Russian zoos and European ones has practically ceased due to sanctions, this is a great way to make money off such exotic species.” Shapoval raised the possibility that the ex-cop was profiting from the seemingly unequal deal as well. In a Telegram video filmed at the Askania-Nova offices, Zubkov gave Meshcheriakov a framed picture of two zebras, which seemed like a paltry trade for the real thing.

Oleg Zubkov’s path to zoo proprietor was circuitous. He was raised on a farm in Nizhnyaya Mokva, near Kursk, where he raised pigs, ducks, and rabbits, an experience that instilled in him a love of nature and animals. His first professional port of call was the Soviet navy: he graduated from the Maritime School in Kerch and later the Kiev Naval Political School. He was trained to be a political commissar—a position often filled by officers loyal to the KGB, who monitored soldiers’ ideological conformity—but, according to the BBC, grew disillusioned by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms and left the military to sell . . . sweaters. Between 1995 and 2010, he served in various positions in the Crimean government; in 2007, he opened his two zoos while simultaneously serving as the deputy of the Supreme Council of Crimea.

In Crimea, people still recognize him on the street: he used to host a popular kids’ show about nature and animals called Kribble Krabble Booms. Nevertheless, his record as a zookeeper is decidedly mixed. In 2016, after allegedly feeding his lions expired meat, he became embroiled in a long-running dispute with the Crimea Veterinary Committee. In 2018, a woman was mauled by one of Zubkov’s lions, though she escaped with minor injuries. (Zubkov claimed she was drunk.) In 2019, on the verge of bankruptcy, he threatened to shoot thirty of his own bears unless he could find people to take them in for adoption. In 2021, one of Zubkov’s tigers bit off a one-year-old boy’s finger; the “lion man” was convicted of negligence, but the sentence was overturned. After the invasion of Ukraine, he was filmed at the Kherson Zoo “inexpertly grabbing raccoons by their tails and dumping them into cages,” as the Washington Post put it. And, in October 2024, a group of lions at Taigan Safari Park tore his chief zookeeper—a woman who had worked for him for sixteen years—to pieces.

Now, Zubkov’s role at Askania-Nova is not unlike Musk’s in the U.S. government: he serves as a sort of semi-official adviser with broad latitude to gut an institution, often for his own enrichment. On October 9, 2023, Zubkov met Meshcheriakov at the Askania-Nova administration building—which now flies the Russian flag. A Telegram video shows them drinking tea and discussing an agreement governing the transfer of animals between the biosphere and Zubkov’s zoos. “On the one hand, we have a state that is not entirely friendly to us,” meaning Ukraine, Meshcheriakov said. “On the other hand, we have, of course, moral and financial support from you and our mainland regions.” 

Zubkov expressed a wish that military flights over the park be stopped, as the noise can be harmful to animals. He also hoped that Putin himself would come to visit the reserve. “Only he, like the visit from Nicholas II, can revive the flow of not only investments but also the flow of people to return to Askania-Nova,” Zubkov said. “Our practical help will be very much needed here,” Zubkov continued. “And of course, the exchange of animals, it’s a thing to do. In Askania-Nova there are amazing animals from other continents, which are inaccessible to us today, and here they are in abundance.” 

Despite the formal trappings of the meeting, the legality of the agreement between Askania-Nova and Zubkov is murky. Shapoval argues that the exchange of certain animals, like endangered American bison and Przewalski horses, both of which he said have already gone to a zoo in Rostov, Russia—and which Zubkov has said he also hopes to acquire for his zoos—violates the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Those species fall under Appendix 1 of the convention, which prohibits the transfer of certain animals across international borders for commercial purposes. According to the environmental lawyer and CITES expert Erica Lyman, a key difficultly for the Ukrainians will be to show that Askania-Nova is, in fact, still Ukraine. “Hypothetically, if this was a transaction that was occurring internally in Russia, then it’s not international trade, and the type of facility doesn’t matter,” she told me. Especially if, as seems more likely by the day, a U.S.-imposed ceasefire leaves the territory in Russian hands.

Zubkov and Meshcheriakov, neither of whom responded to requests for comment, signed and stamped the agreement. “Everyone knows you as a caring environmentalist,” Meshcheriakov said to Zubkov, who thanked him. He was clearly moved by a sense of occasion. Earlier in the meeting, he said, “I have a small Falz-Fein inside me.”

The slow-motion pillaging of Askania-Nova continues. The process has followed a form typical of Putin’s kleptocracy—a system the Trump administration seems determined to implement in America. First, experts like Shapoval, with their suspicious allegiance to the truth, are replaced by loyalists and hacks, who set about enriching themselves. (If they go too far and embarrass the government, Shapoval noted, they can always be tried for corruption and replaced by other hacks.) Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service are facing deep personnel cuts. Imagine if, in a few years, Netflix’s Tiger King comes to “evacuate” animals from these “abandoned” lands. In a kleptocracy, any valuable public good is liable to be stripped for parts, and cold cash is the only relevant metric. The Russians “are interested in the territory and everything on it exclusively in the context of a material resource, whether it’s people or property assets,” Shapoval told me. “They are not interested in a specific species, the environment, the nature of southern Ukraine—they are interested exclusively in the territory, they are interested in status.”  

Zubkov’s plunder of the park has been great for his social media clout. On Telegram, we see his visits to Askania-Nova; we see what looks a lot like four Chapman’s zebras in Crimea, standing still, reflecting each other like an optical illusion. And we see ads. An ad for health advice provided by the expert doctors at Ilinskaya Hospital. An ad for real estate in the Altai Mountains, “far away from conflicts.” An ad for a secret fertilizer. An ad for a Russian-made pickup truck with all-wheel drive. An ad for the Defender of the Fatherland Smartphone Giveaway. Telegram and channel owners split the proceeds from ads fifty-fifty, with payouts in cryptocurrency.

In April 2024, Zubkov also visited Askania-Nova. According to Shapoval, Zubkov took three Chapman’s zebras on that trip. That’s not what we see on Telegram. The video opens with several men filming a zebra in its cage; within thirteen seconds, the person filming loses interest. In that time, we see the animal run the short length of its pen five times. Almost as if it were frantic. Almost as if it knew where it was going.  

Les Vynogradov contributed translation and reporting.