War has inflicted €36bn damage on Ukraine's environment: Minister
Not only has the war in Ukraine cost lives, but Russia's invasion has also significantly damaged the environment, according to the Ukrainian Minister of Environmental Protection.
In an interview with Euronews, Ruslan Strilets said Ukraine's natural world had been devastated since the start of the war in February, inflicting an estimated cost of more than €36 billion.
The minister noted that across 7 months of grinding war more than 2,000 cases of environmental damage had been recorded by the authorities, adding that soil damage and air pollution alone posed "huge" costs of €11.4 and €24.6 billion, respectively.
As of August, some 30% of Ukraine's protected natural areas, covering 3 million acres, have been bombed, polluted, burned, or hit by military manoeuvres, according to the Ministry of the Environmental Protection and Natural Resources.
Strilets pointed out that the European Commission, together with the US State Department, was supporting projects that would help Ukraine recover its natural environment in the future.
"We see that the support of Europe and of other countries is only increasing," he told Euronews. "I am sure that the same situation will [exist] in the future."
"We will do our best to use this support not only for Ukraine but for all the world, and for [a] better future for civilisation," he added.
One consequence of the war, according to Strilets, was that Ukraine had improved its environmental monitoring.
The country has created a special task force, known as the State Environmental Inspectorate, to observe how the natural world is being damaged by the conflict, amid reports of Russian forces burning agricultural lands earlier in Spring.
"Before the war, nobody had the same methodology," the minister
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