Ukraine’s Environment Ministry comments on effects of wrecked oil depots and Russian missile strikes on air pollution
DIANA KRECHETOVA – TUESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2022
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 499,000 tonnes of pollutants have been emitted into the atmosphere as a result of Russian attacks on oil depots in Ukraine.
Ruslan Strilets, Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, shared this number in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia.
In comparison, Strilets said that ArcelorMittal, a steel production company whose Ukrainian base is in Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk Oblast) and Ukraine’s largest polluter, emitted 220,000 tonnes of pollutants a year. Moreover, in this case, emissions were "dosed" – spread over any given year.
"What we have now, however, is a concentration of emissions in a short period of time. [The pollutants emitted] have by now definitely spread over to Europe or Russia.
The Russians just can’t comprehend that the natural environment knows no borders. [These emissions] will affect the entire world, they won’t just disappear. The entire world is fighting climate change, fighting pollution, but everything the [Russian] troops are doing brings the point of no return closer," the Minister said.
The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources reports that as of today, the total volume of pollutants emitted from all sources since the beginning of the full-scale war is estimated to have reached 46 million tonnes. This is tens of times more than in the previous years: the corresponding figure for 2019 was approximately 2.4 million tonnes, and in 2021, it was 2.25 million tonnes.
Strilets said that in the first month of the full-scale war alone, Russia launched 25 times more missiles on Ukraine than during all the years of the war in Syria. And though the impact of missiles and shells "is nothing compared to the volume of pollutants released into the atmosphere as a result of the destruction of oil depots", Ukraine’s environment has been suffering the cumulative effects of these attacks for more than six months now.
The Minister also explained how the natural environment will be affected by the massive volume of polluting emissions, saying that it will result in:
"Precipitation in the form of acid rain and ecosystem changing, which will exacerbate climate change. Europe is already experiencing excessive heat and rain. This water doesn’t just stay in rivers and lakes. It evaporates, then results in massive downpours; it is washed away and does not stay in the ground.
These processes cause the territories that have been used to sustain livelihoods, that have been used for farming, to dry up."
It is not just Ukraine’s natural environment that suffers as a result of these processes. The Minister of Ecology said that "it’s only a matter of time until clouds of emissions from burnt-up oil will be carried to other countries and acid rain falls on their territory."
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