Because the starting of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s Ministry of Environmental Safety needed to change its focus from managing the nation’s pure sources and addressing local weather change to monitoring every case of the atmosphere being intentionally attacked.
From February 2022 till immediately, Kyiv has registered and documented over 8,000 circumstances of Russia’s crimes towards Ukraine’s atmosphere, the nation’s minister advised Euronews.
“We name it crimes towards the atmosphere as a result of there’s air pollution of water sources, destruction of water infrastructure, water provide infrastructure and soil air pollution, soil mining and forest fires. All it is a results of Russia’s conflict”, Svitlana Hrynchuk mentioned.
Hrynchuk advised Euronews that Kyiv’s estimates of those 8,000 circumstances “in financial phrases to (quantity to) greater than €85 billion” — a determine that doesn’t embody the injury to the territories Russia presently occupies and subsequently Ukraine can not entry.
These losses additionally don’t but embody the latest assault on the Chernobyl nuclear energy plant and the injury to its security confinement, Hrynchuk famous.
“Greater than 45 nations have contributed all through this era because the Chernobyl catastrophe. And solely in 2017 we accomplished the development of the brand new protected confinement for greater than €1 billion, which was not too long ago broken in a Russian assault,” she defined.
A Russian drone hit the confinement over the fourth nuclear reactor on the Chernobyl Nuclear Energy Plant on February 14 2025. The drone exploded upon influence with the sarcophagus, inflicting a fireplace that took roughly three weeks to extinguish.
Hrynchuk identified that whereas it’s potential to rebuild and restore civilian infrastructure, resuscitating the atmosphere shall be far more tough, as “some ecosystems and a few pure objects is not going to return to the pre-war unique state.”
Environmental issues in wartime
Coping with day by day Russian missile and drone assaults for 3 and a half years, Ukraine has been primarily specializing in air defence methods to guard civilians. In the meantime, the civilians have been attempting to guard the atmosphere, Hrynchuk mentioned.
“You’ll not discover a single Ukrainian who will let you know that it’s not a precedence now, as a result of it’s precisely throughout Russia’s conflict that we felt how vital the pure sources are”, she identified.
This problem is of explicit significance to those that have misplaced entry to important companies, corresponding to water.
Tens of millions of Ukrainians misplaced entry to water provide when Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka dam within the Kherson area on 6 June 2023. Its reservoir equipped water to chill the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant — the biggest nuclear facility in Europe — and supplied water for irrigation in southern Ukraine.
Kyiv tried to revive the water provide to the individuals and industrial websites, however many penalties nonetheless stay unresolved, Hrynchuk mentioned.
“To start with, these are advanced and costly tasks, and these are tasks in areas which can be always underneath assault,” she famous.
Ukraine‘s environmental EU aspirations
If it weren’t difficult sufficient to attempt to restore environmental losses underneath fixed assaults, Kyiv additionally has to take action in response to EU norms and laws.
Ukraine is ready to endure a key environmental and local weather screening with Brussels on 16 June, when Kyiv must exhibit its alignment with EU laws.
“That is the biggest and most in depth screening course of by way of quantity and period, as a result of it impacts each sector of Ukraine’s economic system. This contains agriculture, infrastructure, healthcare, and schooling,” Hrynchuk mentioned.
Brussels beforehand acknowledged that Ukraine is making regular progress in the direction of the EU, significantly by demonstrating the very best screening fee within the historical past of enlargement. Hrynchuk says environmental and local weather safety elements and sectors have to be prepared for European integration.
To exhibit its dedication, Ukraine ensured that its current minerals take care of the US aligns with Kyiv’s efforts to affix the EU.
“The settlement clearly states that its implementation ought to have in mind the ideas and ambitions of Ukraine to affix the European Union and shouldn’t contradict the principles and laws that we now have to comply with”, Hrynchuk mentioned, explaining that the US deal will in the end carry advantages for the EU as effectively.
“The provision chains of sure supplies are extremely depending on imports from different nations. This is identical drawback for each Europe and the US,” she identified.
“That’s the reason it is rather vital to exchange parts in these provide chains with uncooked supplies and parts which can be produced within the European Union, in Ukraine, in pleasant nations, in civilised nations.”
“That is primarily a matter of nationwide safety for the European Union and Ukraine, in addition to for the USA,” Hrynchuk concluded.
