Main image: Wheat plantations burnt after Russian airstrikes in Donetsk oblast. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images
Russia has caused environmental damage in Ukraine worth UAH 6.9 trillion since 2022.
This was reported on Telegram by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets.
On World Environment Day, he stressed that it is important to speak plainly: since 2014, Russia has been waging a war of destruction against everything living. The Russian forces has deliberately targeted Ukraine’s natural environment, grossly violating the right of every person to a safe environment.
According to him, the damage figures since 2022 alone are staggering — UAH 6.9 trillion. Of this amount, nearly UAH 4 trillion account for destroyed and damaged protected natural areas, while around UAH 2 trillion are due to contaminated soils.
“But behind these figures lies something that cannot be measured in money. It is the stolen summer on the Black Sea, where oil spills caused by strikes on ports, covering up to 800 square kilometers, are destroying marine ecosystems. It is the basic human right to access clean water. One only needs to recall the Russian attack on the Dniester Hydroelectric Station, when a leak of lubricants threatened drinking water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine and Moldova. These are strikes where the consequences are felt most deeply and for the longest time,” Lubinets emphasized.
He is convinced that Russia must be held fully accountable “for every poisoned river and every meter of destroyed land.”
“Environmental disasters of this scale have no borders, so the world must not become accustomed to this reality or treat it as mere statistics,” Lubinets added.
