Environmental activists accused the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine (liquidated) of facilitating massive illegal logging in protected areas.
This was reported by Volodymyr Boreiko, director of the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center.
Activists accuse the leadership of the Ministry of Environment of commercializing natural resources. According to them, Minister Ruslan Strilets personally urged the reserves to "earn" money by harvesting wood, fish, hay and reeds.
According to Volodymyr Boreyko, in February 2024, the Ministry of Ecology approved a limit of 36 cubic meters of timber for the Medobory reserve (Ternopil region) under the guise of "environmental measures to form forest stands."
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Activists call this a blatant violation of Article 16 of the Law "On the Nature Reserve Fund of Ukraine," which prohibits any logging in nature reserves. According to environmentalists, Ivan Fil, director of the Medobory reserve, tried to hide the fact that the Ministry of Environment had approved the logging limit, saying that the ministry had not issued any limits.
The KECC added that the Medobory reserve has long been the epicenter of logging, and in 1990, logging occupied up to 10% of the reserve's territory.
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Boreiko said that the situation became more complicated after the Ministry of the Environment was abolished in mid-2025 and its remnants were merged with the Ministry of Economy. Environmentalists warn that now the scale of natural resource exploitation may increase significantly.
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On September 3, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office filed a lawsuit with the High Anti-Corruption Court to confiscate the property of former Deputy Minister of Environment Viktoriia Kyreeva and her family worth over UAH 3 million. Law enforcement officials suspect that these assets were acquired illegally. Activists are demanding an investigation into the activities of ministerial officials and the management of nature reserves, suspecting the creation of a new corruption scheme that threatens to destroy Ukraine's natural resources.
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The KECC report says that the so-called sanitary felling causes enormous damage to the environment – from reducing soil fertility and biodiversity to destroying tree species listed in the Red Book of Ukraine.
The Ecological and Cultural Center also cites the example of the Podilski Tovtry National Nature Park, which, according to Boreiko, is being turned into a site for commercial logging. After all, while in 2021 the Podilski Tovtry Park received a limit of 38,082 cubic meters of wood from the Ministry, in 2024 it will be 38,880 cubic meters. This is on the territory that is supposed to be protected.
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Environmentalists are especially cynical about the fact that it is dead and old trees that are being cut down, which are vital for birds, insects and small mammals. Owls, birds of prey, and storks nest in these trees, and rotten wood is home to rare beetles such as the deer beetle and the rhinoceros beetle. Their disappearance can destroy entire food chains.
"We have not a national park, but an imitation of nature protection. This is not a reserve, but an ordinary forestry with a nice sign. A protected forest is not a warehouse of vertically stacked firewood, but a place of natural chaos where every animal and plant has the right to live. And while officials are handing out "dimensionless" limits, we risk losing this forever," Boreiko said.
As a reminder, the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture does not support the abolition of the environmental impact assessment procedure for logging and asks to exclude these changes from the draft law No. 13227-d "On the Timber Market".
The Ministry of Economy's letter states that the Ministry does not support the draft law in terms of amendments to the Law of Ukraine "On Environmental Impact Assessment" and considers it necessary to exclude subparagraph 3 of paragraph 2 of Section VII "Final and Transitional Provisions".
