Ukraine: From burnt forests to landmined soil, environmental journalism upended by the Russian war

"Before the large-scale Russian invasion, I was writing about the environmental consequences of introducing rice cultivation in Ukraine", recalls journalist Mariana Verbovska, who has specialised in environmental issues for over 20 years. But since February 2022, her stories have borne the scars of war, from the polluted Black Sea to the destroyed forests.

At the start of the invasion, she initially wondered: "Do people care about the environment in times of war?" Her hesitation was short-lived. In 2023, after she was plunged into darkness in Lviv, in the west of the country, due to massive Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, a reporter in Germany asked her to write about the deaths of dolphins in the Black Sea as a result of the war. At first, the subject seemed "inappropriate" to her given what the population was enduring. Then she realised that if she didn't write about it, nobody else would. She therefore carried out an investigation for the local investigative media outlet in Lviv, NGL.media.

Investigating from the sky

By the end of 2025, the environmental costs incurred by the Russian war in Ukraine are expected to reach 43 billion dollars (around 38 billion euros), according to a Ukrainian study carried out by an independent group of experts, the Initiative on Greenhouse Gas Accounting of War, prepared with the support of the Ukrainian environmental organisation Ekodia. One of the coordinators of the non-governmental organisation, Anna Koriahina, believes that "the prominence given to the environmental effects of the war has increased considerably in the media", even though these topics remain, on the whole, "under-reported" by newsrooms.

One of the reasons is that access to information is "difficult", as Anna Koriahina points out. Nearly 20 per cent of the country is effectively occupied by Russia. The area along the front line is inaccessible due to fighting, landmines, and the risk of drones, while the occupied territories are off-limits to independent journalists, who are systematically arrested by Moscow. Added to this are, at times, restrictions on information imposed by the Ukrainian authorities "for security reasons".

Faced with these obstacles, reporters are investigating from the air. Satellite imagery has become a key tool. Mariana Verbovska, for example, used satellite images from the European Copernicus programme when she wanted to verify a claim by the Ukrainian Ministry of Environment that 30 per cent of the country's forests were occupied or destroyed. It was impossible to assess the damage on the ground: "There are a huge number of landmines; very few people can access the area." She therefore wrote to the US companies Maxar and Planet Labs, which specialise in satellite imagery. Together with a data journalist, she gained access to their data to investigate. The result: the 30 per cent figure was an overestimate. "It is precisely our job to verify these claims," the reporter points out.

Documenting environmental crimes

In Kyiv, environmental journalist Viktoriia Hubareva, who works for the solutions-focused media outlet Rubryka, also uses images from the European Copernicus programme to document the destruction of ecosystems, in particular to estimate the areas burnt. "Our reports may serve in the future as evidence of Russian crimes against the environment, with a view to securing financial reparations from Russia," she explains. Her work can, in particular, inform ongoing criminal investigations into "ecocide", a concept that has been enshrined in Ukrainian law since 2001 but is still rarely enforced.

Their work helps to preserve the memory of inaccessible places. "People who have known these places wonder what they will find when they are able to return," says Viktoriia Hubareva. Together with scientists, she has, for example, documented the fires on the Dzharlylhach peninsula, south-east of Kherson. "We were the first to document them. Nobody else knew about them yet."

The number of such stories is growing across the country. In Mykolaiv, a city in the south-east, around 70 kilometres from the front line, a journalist working for the local media outlet NikVesti, Yuliia Boichenko, began covering environmental issues at the time of the full-scale invasion. There, the environmental consequences of the war have manifested themselves by affecting an essential resource: water. Following a Russian strike in 2022 on the pipeline supplying the city from the River Dnipro, Mykolaiv and its approximately 500,000 inhabitants have been left without a water supply. The use of water from another river in the region, which may pose health risks, has become an ongoing story for her.

An impact far beyond the war

These articles appeal to readers because "the environment affects their future". "We are the ones who will have to live there", emphasises Yuliia Boichenko. "Despite the existential threat hanging over us, we live in a country where people want to improve their immediate environment", adds Viktoriia Hubareva.

However, many of the war's impacts on the environment have yet to be assessed. Mariana Verbovska cites, in particular, the kilometres of fibre-optic cable laid across regions near the front line by both Russian and Ukrainian drones, which are piling up on the ground. "It's not a question of whether we should use them or not; we are constrained by a military framework", she explains.

Their environmental cost remains unknown, although Ukrainian soil is already bearing the marks of their passage.