Nearly 25% of Ukraine’s territory—both on water and on land—is contaminated with explosive ordnance, and the total damage to Ukraine’s environment from the war has already reached EUR 138bn, said the Minister of Economy, Environmental Protection and Agriculture Oleksii Sobolev.
“Large parts of Ukrainian territory have been contaminated, and some ecosystems have been lost irreversibly,” the minister said. He added that hundreds of thousands of people have lost access to safe drinking water.
Therefore, he urged the international community to “develop common tools to protect the environment, because the environment is not limited to the borders of one country.”
