Thousands of trees in the protected forests of the Carpathians within the Hutsulshchyna National Park were destroyed as a result of criminal activities by foresters. The total damages amounted to nearly 387 million hryvnias—a colossal sum and one of the largest ever for an environmental crime within a single criminal proceeding. A lawsuit seeking compensation has been filed against the state-owned enterprise "Forests of Ukraine."
This was reported by the Office of the Prosecutor General.
A crime worth a third of a billion
Large-scale illegal logging in the Carpathians took place as far back as 2022. The organizers of the crime were the very people who were supposed to protect these forests—officials of the then-state-owned enterprise “Kutsk Forestry.”
The logging targeted forest areas in the Bereziv and Yabluniv forest districts, as well as valuable areas within the nature reserve fund—the Hutsulshchyna National Nature Park.
As is usually the case in such situations, officials forged documents and lacked official permits—neither from the national park’s board nor from the relevant ministry. The alleged reason for the logging was the supposedly poor condition of the trees, so they were destroyed for the "sanitary restoration" of the forest. In the logging documents, the operations were recorded as "thinning" or "shaping."
In total, between April and December 2022, through this scheme orchestrated by forestry officials, more than 9,000 trees were felled across an area of over 108 hectares. The damage inflicted on the state amounted to UAH 386,813,000.
The prosecution hopes that the demand for such monumental damages will motivate “Forests of Ukraine” to exert better oversight over their regional forestry officials.
“This concerns the systematic and deliberate destruction of nature reserve fund sites for profit. The enterprise, as the legal successor of State Enterprise ‘Kutske Forestry,’ which in 2022 became part of State Enterprise ‘Forests of Ukraine,’ must compensate for the damages caused by the unlawful actions of its officials. We will be insisting in court on full compensation,” said Yevheniy Karabin, First Deputy Head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office.
EcoPolitic previously covered how forest users conceal illegal industrial logging under the pretense of sanitary felling.
According to the results for 2025, the State Bureau of Investigation reported that the damages calculated over the course of the year from forestry sector officials’ crimes amounted to UAH 546 million.
At the same time, the salaries of top managers at “Forests of Ukraine” turned out to be among the highest in the country. Some regional branch directors in 2025 received over UAH 10 million.
