Amid broader concerns of a "fossil fuel war" in Ukraine and its effect on the environment, a group says it has documented more than 150 cases to date of alleged ecological crimes by Russian forces.
Based in the capital Kyiv, the Ukrainian non-governmental organization Ecoaction is recording cases of what it says are environmental crimes in military actions by Russian troops that cause serious pollution and harm to the ecosystem and people.
"Of course, what we are seeing now in Ukraine, we see that these illegal acts and actions of Russia, they severely damage the environment and they could definitely be classified as eco-crimes," said Sofia Sadogurska, a climate change expert and member of the Ecoaction team investigating environmental offences.
Speaking to CTV's Your Morning on Monday, Sadogurska, whose exact location could not be disclosed for security reasons, said they are looking at instances of soil, water and air pollution, as well as damage to nuclear power plants, oil depots, sea ports and hazardous waste storage facilities.
"Some of these cases could be classified legally as ecological crimes, but definitely all of them cause a lot of damage," she said.
Even before the invasion by Russian forces in late February, a 2018 UN analysis found that fighting with separatist forces in the eastern Donbas region had affected, damaged or destroyed ecosystems within an area of at least 530,000 hectares, including 18 nature reserves, with thousands of forest fires created in the military zone and neighbouring areas.
Ukraine's Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources also has been recording instances of environmental damage following the invasion on Feb. 24.
Along with environmental concerns surrounding the occupations of the Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants, as well as the shelling and siege of the port city of Mariupol, the ministry has made allegations of recent Russian attacks on a coal mine and gas station.
The ministry also says an intercepted Russian missile damaged a mineral fertilizer tank, contaminating water downstream with ammonium and nitrates.
"All these crimes are happening every day," Sadogurska said.
Ukraine has 15 active nuclear reactors and throughout the war, there have been reports of Russian soldiers disturbing the radioactive ground near Chornobyl and firing on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia facility, briefly setting it on fire.
"Were we to see a disaster, intentional or unintentional, at a nuclear facility, the impacts of that could last decades to generations," Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington, D.C., told CTVNews.ca in a Zoom interview on Monday.
"We are still seeing the impacts of the Chornobyl disaster, literally a generation after that disaster occurred."
These events and others prompted more than 1,000 legal, environmental and peacebuilding experts to issue an open letter in March, penned in part by Muffett, warning of the environmental costs of war.
"The truth is that the environmental consequences of war often remain poorly understood until long after the bullets have stopped flying," Muffett said.
On the issue of compensation for environmental damage caused by war, Ecoaction has pointed to the precedent of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, during which Iraqi forces set fire to more than 700 oil wells, releasing toxic metals and carcinogens into the atmosphere for months.
As a result, the United Nations Compensation Commission, a subsidiary of the UN Security Council, awarded approximately US$3 billion to Kuwait.
However, as Muffett points out, the legal question is complex. Neither Russia nor the United States recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, while the conventions that do exist are vague enough that pursuing action is "extraordinarily difficult."
Ensuring accountability requires both vigilance and political will, he says, calling the conflict in Ukraine an example of a "fossil fuel war" spurred on by Russia's oil and gas interests.
The U.S. and EU accelerating their transition away from fossil fuels, he says, could disrupt the political calculus and create stability for climate issues.
"We have seen these linkages play out in one country after another over decades. Not only do fossil fuels fund autocrats and oligarchs, not only do fossil fuels fuel the planes and the tanks, but even more importantly they create bottlenecks," he said.
"They create targets that have been a recurring focus of military operations and a recurring instigator of war for literally decades."
With files from The Associated Press
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