he war in Ukraine has inflicted significant environmental damage on the country’s soil, air and water and people, which the prosecutor general’s office estimates has reached some 6.4 trillion hryvnias (145.6 billion US dollars).
However, prosecuting instances of alleged environmental war crimes, also known as ecocide, continues to be extremely challenging.
To date, Ukraine has documented only two potential cases of ecocide committed by Russia, backed by a complete body of evidence. These involved repeated attacks on the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology and the Oskil dam, destroyed in September 2022, and are currently being heard in court.
An investigation into the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant is ongoing.
These cases were prosecuted under Articles 438, concerning war crimes and 441, concerning ecocide, of the criminal code of Ukraine as the attacks on these facilities could have caused an environmental catastrophe both within the country and beyond its borders.
Ecocide is not defined as a separate war crime in international law. At the same time, there is a provision that prohibits actions causing widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the environment during armed conflict. Thus environmental damage can be qualified as a war crime, but not under the label of ecocide.
Under Ukrainian law, explained Vladyslav Ihnatenko, prosecutor of Ukraine’s specialised environmental prosecutor’s office, ecocide is categorised as a criminal offence, but not separately classified as a war crime.
“It’s a broad term for gross violations of international humanitarian law, which provides the environment with varying degrees of protection from attack, destruction and damage,” he continued. “However, some military actions that cause or could cause environmental harm are still permissible.”
He gave the example of numerous cases in the Kherson region involving the shelling of steppes and grasslands, sparking fires that destroy hectares of fields and planted areas. This, too, was not considered an environmental crime.
“In other words, this all constitutes damage to the natural environment – the destruction of bridges, river pollution and landscape devastation resulting from military operations, the use of heavy machinery and so forth,” Ihnatenko said.
Environmental crimes are among the most challenging to prosecute because their consequences are not always immediately apparent, explained Andrii Yakovliev, a lawyer at the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR).
“Nature doesn’t change instantly, the full impact reveals itself over time,” he said. “These crimes are also complicated because they require the analysis of vast amounts of information.”
However, the difficulty in proving ecocide does not change the fact that the aggression itself is illegal and that its consequences should be compensated for, Yakovliev continued.
“Even when the consequences of aggression on Ukrainian territory do not constitute a war crime, the potential right to compensation should still be asserted. The other question is whether adequate mechanisms for such reparations actually exist.”
He noted that it was currently impossible to determine whether Ukraine would be compensated for the environmental damage caused by Russia’s attacks.
“Reparations should be enforced,” Yakovliev said. “The problem now is not just the destruction of forests, but of the entire ecosystem. It is a grave problem that Russia is waging war that destroys all life in its path.”
Pollutants
The most significant environmental impact has been identified as air pollution as a direct consequence of Russian shelling that ignites fires in sites ranging from civilian homes to major oil and gas facilities. These blazes release vast amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere.
In the Sumy region, authorities have filed a lawsuit to recover over 1.7 million hryvnias (38,876 US dollars) in damages from six Russian military commanders, said Hryhorii Zub, head of the State Environmental Inspectorate.
“This is the first lawsuit of its kind in Ukraine to target specific, named war criminals,” Zub continued. “The case concerns the criminal order to use high-explosive aerial bombs to strike a community in the Sumy region in March 2022. That attack, for instance, destroyed more than 200 trees in a local forestry.”
The August 2024 discharge of pollutants into the Seim River from the Russian village of Tyotkino, near the Ukrainian border, spread throughout the river systems in Sumy and Chernihiv regions.
“The pollution caused a massive fish kill in the Seim, including species on Ukraine’s Red List of endangered animals. The total damages exceeded 65 billion hryvnias (1.4bn dollars),” said Zub.
Again, that incident was classified as environmental damage due to river pollution and the loss of fish, rather than as ecocide.
“Environmental damage in the Sumy region has been assessed at over 76 billion hryvnias (1.7bn dollars) since the start of the full-scale invasion,” said Zub.
Oleh Treitiak, head of the Regional Ecological Inspectorate, said that damages in the neighbouring Chernihiv region reached 32.34 billion hryvnias (740m dollars) in the same period.
“And these are only the calculations we can conduct where the security situation permits,” he clarified. “Otherwise, the figure would be significantly higher.”
Treitiak noted six attacks on oil storage facilities and a February 2022 separate strike on an Epicentr hypermarket in Chernihiv which released 17 hazardous chemical substances into the atmosphere, with the total damages amounting to over eight million hryvnias (183,000 dollars).
In November 2025, he continued, nine Russian drones struck a storage depot for urea-ammonia nitrate in Nizhyn, with the ensuing leak causing environmental damage estimated at nearly 13.387 million hryvnias (306,000 dollars).
In a separate incident, a Russian drone strike in October 2025 on the Pryluky Naftonaliv oil depot sparked a major fire which burned for over 24 hours and consumed more than two tonne of crude oil, destroying part of the facility.
While attacks on facilities like oil depots are classified as environmental war crimes, the impact of Russian strikes on residential buildings – while not classified as ecocide – cause significant air and land pollution.
For instance, on December 25, 2025, a Russian drone struck a high-rise apartment building in Chernihiv. According to Treitiak, the strike released nearly eight metric tonnes of pollutants into the air. The total environmental damage was calculated at UAH 23,658,558 (541,000 dollars).
The expectation is that future reparations will be secured through international mechanisms such as the Register of Damage, although the process itself is still under development.
The Register is accepting claims from individuals and is gradually opening new categories, although as of March 1, 2026, the category for environmental damage was not yet open.
Once claims are submitted, they will be reviewed by a commission, after which a compensation fund will be established. This fund is expected to utilise confiscated Russian sovereign assets held abroad.”
“What is happening now is the creation of a new global precedent,” Ihnatenko explained. “It’s a deterrent for any future aggressors who might plan or want to seize territory or start a war. This will establish an international practice of holding them accountable not only criminally, but also financially. In other words, they will have to pay for their own aggression out of their own budget.”
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/ukraine-why-ecocide-so-hard-prove
