Since the beginning of the full-scale war with Russia, Ukraine has suffered 1.387 trillion hryvnias in environmental damage.
This was announced by the acting head of the State Environmental Inspection (SEI) Ihor Zubovych during the conference "Damage caused by Russia to the ecology of Ukraine during the 9 months of war", reports Ukrinform.
"To date, more than UAH 1.387 trillion has already been calculated using only the three available methods. Damages to atmospheric air amount to UAH 927.6 billion, land due to pollution and clogging – UAH 443.7 billion, and the total amount of damages caused to water bodies is UAH 15.7 billion," the official clarified.
According to him, the figures are not final, because DEI constantly receives new information and clarifies the data. Damages may increase significantly after the inspection finds out the full scale of the destruction. For example, in the Kharkiv region after the deoccupation, 26 environmental crimes were recorded, and an investigation is already underway to determine the damages.
"At the moment, 987 events with signs of eco-crime have been entered into the unified register of losses. For some of them, losses have already been calculated using existing methods, for the rest of the cases already recorded, it is still impossible to calculate damage either due to the lack of methods, or due to insufficiency information on such recorded cases, some occur in the temporarily occupied territories. According to the calculated cases, the damage caused by the actions of the Russian Federation to the environment of Ukraine amounts to UAH 1,387,137,410.628 thousand (UAH 1.38 trillion),” said the chief coordinator of the Operational Headquarters of the Eco-crimes of Russia Elena Kryvoruchkina.
Since March 1, 2022, on the basis of the State Environmental Inspectorate of Ukraine, the Operational Headquarters has been working to fix, collect information and calculate the damage caused to the environment as a result of the Russian aggression on the territory of Ukraine. The Headquarters includes representatives of the State Environmental Inspection, the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the National Security and Defense Council, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine and other government agencies and organizations.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the war caused large-scale environmental changes, which have an extremely negative impact on the natural environment not only of Ukraine, but also of Europe.
9 months of war with Russia led to the fact that:
- 182,880 m2 of soil is contaminated with hazardous substances;
- 2,365,129 m2 of land is littered with the remains of destroyed objects and ammunition;
- 680,618 tons of petroleum products burned during the shelling, polluting the air with dangerous substances; 23,286 hectares of forest were burned by rockets and shells, some of which, according to the most optimistic forecasts, will be restored within 10 years, the rest - lost forever;
- 7,155,689 m2 of objects, including critical infrastructure, were destroyed, and their remains caused damage to the environment.
On November 6, the world celebrated the International Day for the prevention of environmental exploitation during war and armed conflicts, which threaten the planet and future generations. Ukraine's environment has suffered significant losses, some of which cannot be counted as environmental damage, and will never be the same as before February 24, 2022.
