Russian aggression caused environmental damage to Ukraine worth UAH 2.6 trillion: head of the Ministry of Environment
Russia has caused environmental damage to Ukraine in the amount of at least 2.6 trillion hryvnias, more than 6,000 environmental crimes have been recorded. The Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Svitlana Grynchuk informed about this in an interview with Ukrinform.
She noted that the scale of damage caused to the environment is one of the largest in financial terms.
“More than 6,000 different cases have already been recorded. According to estimates, it is somewhere between 2.6-2.7 trillion hryvnias. The damage caused to the environment is one of the largest in monetary terms, because it is a huge amount of damaged and destroyed agricultural land, forest land environmental and industrial status, polluted basins of our water arteries, huge mined and polluted by explosive objects., – emphasized Grynchuk.
According to her, shelling by Russian troops every day causes fires that cover hundreds of hectares of forests. Due to the mining of the territories, the rescue services cannot effectively use all possible means to fight the fire.
As of mid-October, more than half a million hectares of forest areas are mined.
“Just since the beginning of the year, more than 23,000 hectares of forests have been damaged by fires. This number is increasing every day.”, – added the official.
In addition, 20% of nature conservation areas of Ukraine are currently under occupation or in the war zone. According to the estimates of the experts of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the losses to the nature reserve fund of Ukraine amount to almost 650 billion hryvnias.
