The Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, Ruslan Strilets, said in an interview with TIME that one day Russia will pay for all its crimes, including crimes against the environment.
Nature has become one of the victims of military aggression, which will affect the health of people and ecosystems, reports Ministry of Environment on Telegram.
The message noted that the magazine TIME one of the oldest and most influential publications in the USA and the world, published an extensive report on the work of the Ministry of Environment during the war and documenting the damage caused to the environment.
The article said that the team of the Ministry of Environment already in the first hours after the start of the full-scale invasion assured of its readiness to work, despite all the difficulties and challenges of wartime.
Thus, a working group of more than 80 scientists, lawyers and economists was created at the Operational Headquarters of the State Environmental Inspection (SEI) to develop new methods for calculating environmental damage. This data will be used in future international lawsuits for damages.
"From the first days of the war, the Ministry of Environment and subordinate state authorities began work on documenting the damage caused to the environment. SEI specialists have already made more than 200 trips to take samples at the sites of environmental crimes, and Ukrainians have sent more than 2,000 appeals about the damage caused by the war to the environment with the help of the specially created resource "EcoZagroza", the message says.
However, some damages to Ukrainian nature cannot be assessed in financial terms. The war also erased decades of work on improving environmental protection in Ukraine.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that Yevgen Fedorenko, Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, said that in 8 months of the full-scale invasion of Russia caused more than €37 billion in damage to Ukraine's environment.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strelets said that Ukraine will initiate the creation of the Global Platform for the development of international methods for assessing environmental damage from military operations.
