Many of these lands were natural steppes that were turned into fields. Steppes are belts of grassland, usually treeless plains, that stretch from Ukraine through Russia and Central Asia and into Mongolia and China.
“I fear for the fate of such beautiful flowers as this one,” he tells me.
“By rough estimates, 20-30% of Ukraine’s wood cutting is on the so-called black market,” says Dmytro Karabchuk.