There is a gesture that in Ukraine, today, is no longer innocent: walking in a field, collecting mushrooms in a forest, traveling a country road that has been known for a lifetime. Each of these steps could be the last. Liudmyla Kryvorotko, Kherson, knows this well. For her, that family road became the place where she lost two of her four children, a 19 -year -old boy and a girl of 22, instantly killed by the explosion of a threat left by the soldiers in retreat during an attempt to escape in the winter of 2022.
His tragedy is not an isolated case, but the human face of an unprecedented environmental catastrophe. Today, Ukraine is one of the most mined nations in the world: a larger area of Greece, about a quarter of its territory (138,503 km²), is an open -air mined field. A deadly inheritance that has already caused 359 victims and almost 1,000 injured and that will continue to kill and mutilate for decades. But this is only the visible part of a silent war that is poisoning the fertile heart of the old continent, threatening the soil, water and food of an entire nation, once known as the “granary of Europe”.
A mined land
Mine contamination is widespread. As Guardian Yelyzaveta Kyseliova explained, an expert of Shostka explosives, it is no longer just about battlefields: “mines are everywhere, launched by drones, scattered by the rockets”. This invisible danger paralyzed the life of entire communities, making inaccessible parks, forests and, above all, agricultural land. The Halo Trust humanitarian organization estimates that over one million acres of cultivated fields are scattered with explosives, limiting the country’s agricultural production.
Reclamation is a titanic enterprise. The United Nations Expert Paul Heslop speaks of “a level of complexity and flow rate never seen before”. Despite the efforts of organizations such as Halo (which has already removed over 36,000 devices) and international support, such as the recent delivery of six new machines for disassembly by the United Nations program for development (UDP), the path is long and expensive. It is estimated that the entire project will require many billion dollars. In the meantime, people learn to live with risk. “People get used to war. Until they are killed, they think it is fine,” Kyseliova tells bitterly.
The poisoned legacy
Mines are only the tip of the iceberg. A report from the Common Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission, entitled “State of the environment and the climate in Ukraine” and published in April, reveals an even deeper ecological catastrophe. War is literally poisoning the soil. The massive use of ammunition has released toxic elements such as lead, mercury and arsenic in the environment. These invisible and persistent substances can penetrate food chains, accumulate in agricultural products and arrive on our tables, with “serious consequences for public health”.
Paradoxically, while greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 23-26% in 2022 due to the destruction of industries and energy systems, the war itself generated new emissions and more insidious atmospheric pollution. Anomal peaks of particulate (PM2.5 and PM10) and ozone have been recorded in Kiev, linked to fires and bombings. Air pollution, already responsible for about 42,900 premature deaths per year in the country in 2019, is now aggravated by the use of generators and solid fuels to cope with the energy crisis. The marine environment is also in serious danger: the Black Sea suffers the release of chemicals, ammunition and hydrocarbons, and monitoring is almost completely interrupted.
Fires and an ecosystem under attack
The impact also extends to the vast Ukrainian forests, which represent about 15% of the total coverage of the country and were affected for about 1.7 million hectares. The forest fires, already aggravated by climate change, have become a plague. According to the JRC report, they represent 45-65% of the annual forest coverage loss. Military operations not only prevent prevention and shutdown activities, but are often the same cause of the bonfires. In 2022 and 2023, over 90% of forest fires were detected within the war zones.
The bet of a green reconstruction
In a present dominated by destruction, talking about reconstruction may seem naive and out of place or, at least, premature. However, planning the future is an act of resilience. It is in this perspective that the “Ukraine plan” supported by the European Union must be read: a project that does not just imagine how to repair, but how to reconstruct better. The goal is ambitious: to exploit the restart, inevitable and necessary, to immediately integrate environmental and climatic objectives, transforming the tragedy into an opportunity for a green, sustainable and resilient turning point.
This means investing in energy efficiency for buildings (80% of the residential building heritage is inefficient), modernizing the district heating networks, promoting sustainable mobility by electrifying public transport and adopting agricultural practices that protect the ground from erosion (which already affects 40% of the territory). It is a huge challenge, which will require a firm political commitment and the involvement of citizens and local authorities, such as the 363 mayors who have already joined the “pact of the mayors for climate and energy”. Transforming one of the most serious and large post -war European conflicts into a green recovery model will not be easy, but it is the only way to guarantee Ukraine and its citizens a future of peace and sustainability.
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