The Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, Ruslan Strilets, said that the occupation of natural resources in the center of Europe is blocking the development of technologies in the whole of Europe.
This happened at the international conference on raw materials security of Europe "Conference on Raw Materials Security of Europe" in Prague, Czech Republic, the Ministry of Environment reports on Facebook.
It also emphasized that the war has been going on since 2014, and in 2017, environmental damage from hostilities in Donbas amounted to 33 wagons of high-quality gold, which is more than the gold reserves of the russian federation.
"For many years, we have been losing not only the quality of the environment, but also the potential benefit. There are data that the profit lost during the war from the development of subsoil can reach $12.4 trillion. We don't have access to about ⅕ of all our deposits," he said.
Strelets also emphasized that Ukraine has about 5% of the world's reserves of raw materials and deposits of 21 out of 30 critical minerals, including lithium, cobalt, scandium, graphite, tantalum, niobium, etc.
"We at the Ministry of Environment insist that Ukrainian raw materials be used for high-tech production here in Ukraine. Our state is developing a legal field for technology even during war. We are reforming the State Geological Service, which should become a single service center for business. Already by the end of the year, we are planning positive changes in weather legislation. We are digitalizing all possible services," the minister said.
He also added that those people who consider it risky to invest in a warring country half a year ago believed that Ukraine would withstand a maximum of 3 days of russian invasion.
As EcoPolitic reported before, in Ukraine for half a year of war damage to the environment amounted to more than 962 billion hryvnias, without taking into account the damage to forests, the Black and Azov seas, subsoil, natural reserve fund, etc.
