$71 billion – this is the amount of environmental damage caused to Ukraine's environment by military operations during the 1000 days of the full-scale invasion.
This figure was announced by Svitlana Hrynchuk, Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, during the UN Climate Change Conference COP29, which is taking place in Baku, the ministry reports.
She also named the mass of carbon dioxide emissions caused by the fighting and shelling of Ukrainian cities, the fires that resulted from them, as well as additional volumes of CO2 due to the displacement of internally displaced persons. These and other figures reported by Svitlana Hrynchuk were collected by EcoPolitic in an infographic:
The minister said that during the full-scale invasion, Russia committed more than 6,500 crimes against the Ukrainian environment.
“More than 6 million Ukrainians had to seek temporary protection in different European countries, which resulted in additional 3.3 million tons of CO2 emissions. The total amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the war is 180 million tons,” she said.
According to the head of the Ministry of Environment, 3 million hectares of forests have already been destroyed in Ukraine due to the war.
As a result, the greenhouse gas absorption potential of Ukrainian forests has decreased by 1.7 million tons.
Svitlana Hrynchuk also mentioned the area of Ukrainian land contaminated by explosive ordnance. It amounts to 139,000 square kilometers.
“This is 2 times the area of Azerbaijan,” the minister said.
She also emphasized that the combustion products released into the air as a result of Russian missile strikes have already reached Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Serbia, Croatia, and Poland.
Recently, EcoPolitic told about the damage the war has caused to the Black Sea. Environmentalists compared the impact of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam blowing up on it to the Chernobyl accident.
