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Missiles and mortars kill and kill people, but Russia’s year-long war in Ukraine is also poisoning the air, soil and sea, said the Ukrainian minister of environmental protection, who built a small that Russia should pay for ecological “crimes.”
“We have lost some part of our nature forever,” said Ruslan Strilets in an interview from the capital, Kyiv, referring to things like groundwater and forest fires.
Ukraine estimates the total environmental damage to date at more than $48 billion US.
Since the first week of the war in early 2022, inspection teams across Ukraine have been sampling, photographing and recording water and soil contamination and measuring air pollution amid the constant barrage of missiles and mortars.
In June, for example, Ukraine said a Russian missile tore into a shopping mall in Kremenchuk, killing 20 people. According to the State Environmental Inspectorate, the inferno and billowing black smoke also released 2,200 tons of pollutants into the air, including ammonia, benzopyrene and sulfur trioxide.
Air pollution has increased three- to fourfold since the war began, even though industrial production is only about 30 percent of its pre-war output, the environment minister said.
“On the first day of the war, I realized that war is not only for people’s fear, but spreads to all living things,” said Olena Kryvoruchkina, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the head of the coordinator of the Operational Headquarters, i.e. collect data and evidence of environmental degradation.
“We can quickly build a bridge or a house, but it will take decades to renew the nature that has been destroyed,” he said. However, he added, “we will try.”
Ukraine has not yet worked out the mechanics, but the ecological damage from the war will be a large part of the compensation in the future. The big challenge is to prove the accusations of crimes in international courts and force Russia to pay.
Currently, Ukraine is collecting data and building international support.
‘A danger to Ukrainian health’
Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian fuel depots and refineries, for example, led to massive fires that released dangerous pollutants including soot, methane and carbon dioxide. Since the invasion began, more than 600,000 tons of petroleum products have been burned, according to the latest statistics from the environment ministry.
“This is a danger to the health of Ukrainians. These burning oil depots and other air pollution because of the war operations ended in people’s lungs, and can cause terrible diseases,” said Kryvoruchkina.
But scientists say the damage goes beyond humans.
A chemical tanker was hit by a Russian missile the day after the invasion began to pollute the Black Sea, said Ukraine. Satellite photos taken nearly a month later show the 2,000-square-kilometer slick, according to the Ukrainian Institute of Marine Biology.
Last summer, dolphins starved to death on a Black Sea beach. Scientists suggest dozens may have been killed by military activities such as the use of sonar, which could have caused “acoustic trauma” to the animals.
About 15 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural land is littered with mines and other unexploded ordnance, especially in the east and south of the country. In January, Environment Minister Strilets visited one of Ukraine’s national parks, the Holy Mountains in the Donetsk region.
“I was shocked,” he said. “All the infrastructure of the park was destroyed, more than 60 percent of the trees were burned.”
A few hours after the visit, a park employee was seriously injured when he stepped on a mine.
“Russia must be held accountable,” Strilets said.
Inheritance is toxic
At the COP27 climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, in November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the war had destroyed five million hectares (about two million hectares) of forest in the first six months.
“There is no effective climate policy without peace on Earth,” he said.
Even so, the destruction of the environment draws less attention than the horrific human carnage of war. Ukrainians, especially near the front lines, are just trying to survive next week, said Strilets, admitting that the environment and climate change are not on the list of important priorities.
But the conflict left a toxic legacy that reached far into the future.
“Ultimately, this is a human story,” said Doug Weir, director of research and policy at the UK-based Observatory on Conflict and the Environment.
“Part of the problem is that, historically, we have been able to separate environmental damage from humanitarian consequences, when we all need to breathe, we all need to drink, we all need to eat. So, environmental damage and conflict are humanitarian issues. . It needs to be perceived as such. .”
The Conflict and Environment Observatory is developing its own database on the war in Ukraine, with more than 700 cases recorded so far, one of the international organizations collecting evidence.
“What’s interesting about this war is that it’s going to be the most documented conflict in terms of environmental damage that we’ve ever seen,” Weir said.
Social media posts, photos and satellite imagery mean a missile strike can amass more than a hundred bits of evidence, all stored in a database.
But physical checks are still a barrier in Russian-controlled areas or near active front lines.
‘Our work for the future’
Currently, there is no formal mechanism for pursuing or prosecuting environmental crimes, but there are precedents for compensation. After the 1991 Gulf War, the UN Security Council set up a Compensation Commission in charge of Iraq to pay compensation for damage to Kuwait, including environmental damage.
Iraq eventually paid US$52.4 billion over three decades in compensation to more than 1.5 million claimants. (The Compensation Commission announced that the last payment to Kuwait will be on January 13, 2022.)
Russia’s role in the UN Security Council will complicate the mechanism in this conflict, but there may be other routes, Weir said. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution in November recommending an international registry of damages, to coordinate evidence.
But the bigger question, Weir said, is where the money for compensation will come from. “Will Western countries freeze Russian assets and use them to pay reparations? Environmental remediation is expensive, complex and will take years.”
Calculating the damage in economic terms is also complicated. Mark Zheleznyak, best known for his work assessing the costs of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chornobyl, Ukraine, has been enlisted by the State Environmental Inspectorate to help establish the methodology.
“Our work is for the future,” said Zheleznyak, who works with international partners, including a scientific advisory board.
Zheleznyak said that all the work being done will help Ukraine’s remediation plan, and could serve as a “blueprint for war damage and recovery assessments in other parts of the world affected by military conflict.”
Ukraine admits that in the past, some heavy industries – like the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, which is now being destroyed – were very polluting. In the future, the Strilets want the slogan “Build Back Better” to include “Greener.”
Weir said that “in many ways, this conflict is an opportunity for Ukraine to rebuild itself by producing renewable energy in a more sustainable way, with less dependence on Russian fossil fuels.”
CBC News in Ukraine: This week, join The National, hosted by CBC chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault in Kyiv. Watch at 9 pm ET on the CBC News Network, 10 pm on CBC TV, and on the CBC Gem and CBC News Explore streaming services.
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