Great tragedies often serve as catalysts for transformative changes. A shift towards environmental accountability is unfolding before our eyes.
Alongside the untold human suffering, the environment has been one of the gravest victims of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Since February 2022, Russia has been systematically targeting dams, oil depots, and chemical plants; setting fire to forests and internationally protected territories, and even taking action against nuclear power facilities. The most severe environmental damage has been documented in or near active zones of hostilities—namely, the Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions. These actions have resulted in polluted waters and reservoirs, scorched forests, dead wildlife, flooded populated areas, and more. The consistency and directness of the attacks leave little doubt that they were carried out intentionally rather than by mistake.
As of today, there are over 8,900 documented cases of damage and losses resulting from Russian aggression, with the estimated immediate damage (not including long-term consequences) nearing 4 trillion hryvnias (roughly $95.6 billion).
One of the most devastating examples is the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, with environmental damage estimated at 77.8 billion hryvnias (approximately $1.86 billion). The collapse of the dam caused catastrophic flooding, destroyed entire ecosystems along the Dnipro River, contaminated water sources, and disrupted irrigation systems crucial for agriculture in southern Ukraine.
Importantly, the environmental impact of this war does not stop at Ukraine’s borders. The degradation of ecosystems, threats to water and food security, and the release of toxic substances have regional and global consequences—affecting climate stability and public health across Europe and beyond. Ukraine’s ecosystems have been altered in ways that will take decades to recover.
Recognising this, Point 8 of President Zelensky’s Peace Formula identifies immediate environmental protection as a key priority. The central question in this regard is the following: Can international law and the Ukrainian legal framework protect the environment?
Humankind began defining what is allowed and what is not on the battlefield as early as the 1860s, thus developing a new field of international law—international humanitarian law (IHL). These rules are primarily aimed at protecting different categories of persons who do not, or no longer, participate in hostilities, as well as objects not used for military purposes. However, for much of modern history, environmental damage during warfare was overlooked—considered collateral rather than criminal.
History offers no shortage of examples that reveal this glaring legal blind spot. During the Vietnam War (1955–1975), more than 4.5 million acres of forest were destroyed by the widespread use of chemical defoliants like Agent Orange, leaving behind degraded soil and collapsed ecosystems that continue to bear the scars today. In the 1991 Gulf War, retreating Iraqi forces torched over 700 Kuwaiti oil wells and dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf. Although the UN Compensation Commission awarded more than \$5 billion for environmental restoration, not a single individual was held accountable for environmental war crimes. In Darfur, Sudan, where conflict erupted in 2003, water wells were deliberately poisoned as part of a state-backed campaign aimed at displacing and destroying ethnic communities. And during the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, Russian forces set fire to some 950 hectares of the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park—home to rare flora and fauna, including endemic Caucasian fir and pine—inflicting ecological damage that experts estimate will take more than a century to repair.
Under the applicable IHL, the natural environment is recognised as a civilian object, meaning that it cannot be targeted unless it is being used for military purposes. It also clearly prohibits methods or means of warfare that cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the environment.
These rules are enshrined in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, in particular Articles 35.3 and 55, as well as in Customary Rules 43, 44, and 45.
Notwithstanding this special protection under IHL, it was only with the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) in 1998 that targeting the environment became a war crime. Specifically, Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute criminalises the launching of a disproportionate attack with the knowledge that it will cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the environment.
However, the threshold for prosecuting environmental harm under the Rome Statute remains extremely high. First, many incidents of serious environmental damage fail to meet all three cumulative criteria of the so-called “three-part test”—that the harm be widespread, long-term, and severe. Second, even if these criteria are met, the damage must result from an attack that is clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. As a result, many instances of environmental harm during armed conflict fall outside the current legal definition of war crimes.
While the Rome Statute includes other articles—for example, Article 8(2)(b)(ii), which criminalises launching an attack against a civilian object and could cover damage to the environment—Article 8(2)(b)(iv) is the only provision in which the term “environment” is explicitly used.
Nevertheless, under this legal framework, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has not yet prosecuted any cases solely for environmental war crimes, making it difficult to establish legal precedent. In relation to the situation in Darfur, while the destruction of water sources, farmland, and wells was documented, these actions were not framed as distinct environmental crimes. Instead, environmental damage was treated as part of a broader pattern of persecution, extermination, and forcible transfer.
This lack of precedent creates legal uncertainty about how the Court interprets and applies provisions protecting the environment, and to what extent these can be used in future cases.
In a promising development, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor is drafting a Policy on Environmental Crimes, aimed at clarifying standards and approaches under the Rome Statute. Ukrainian civil society groups—most notably Truth Hounds—have actively contributed to this consultative process, drawing on their extensive experience working on war crimes and environmental damage, including insights from their research on the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam.
Ukraine’s approach: a legal breakthrough in real-time
Traditionally, prosecution and adjudication of international crimes have taken place after the end of war. This often made the processes simpler, given the new status quo. Ukraine is breaking this pattern by investigating and prosecuting environmental war crimes while the war is still ongoing—a daunting challenge considering the scale, complexity, and continued hostilities.
According to data from the Office of the Prosecutor General, Ukrainian authorities are currently investigating over 240 cases related to environmental war crimes under Article 438 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, committed as part of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. These cases include:
- Attacks on and destruction of dams, oil depots, and chemical facilities
- Damage to national parks and UNESCO-listed biosphere reserves
- Targeting of nuclear facilities, including threats to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
- Massive forest fires, many ignited by artillery and missile strikes.
Additionally, Ukraine is one of the few countries to have criminalised ecocide—under Article 441 of its Criminal Code. This crime focuses solely on the environment and criminalises “mass destruction of flora and fauna, poisoning of air or water resources, and any other actions that may cause an environmental disaster.” Eleven incidents of ecocide, as an additional legal qualification, are currently under investigation.
Three cases have already been submitted to Ukrainian courts, and two more have led to official notices of suspicion.
This means that Ukraine, through its unprecedented work in documenting, investigating, and prosecuting war crimes against and affecting the environment, is shaping the approaches, understanding, standards, interpretation and application of the legal accountability framework. The work undertaken by prosecutors, investigators, and judges in the coming decades will be studied, analysed, cited, and cross-referenced worldwide.
There are several challenges in prosecuting environmental destruction and damage as war crimes. One of the biggest obstacles is the lack of international precedent: the ICC has yet to prosecute a case solely for environmental war crimes. In this regard, Ukraine finds itself in a uniquely complex position, with prosecutors and judges developing and interpreting the standards and practices surrounding the prosecution of such crimes. Given this, it is crucial that Ukraine closely monitors the development of the ICC’s Policy on Environmental Crimes to ensure its vision and practice align with the institution’s approach, especially considering Ukraine’s accession to the Rome Statute as a Member State on 1 January 2025.
A particularly progressive development, highly relevant for Ukraine, came with Ruling 01 of 1 February 2023 in Case 05 of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace of Colombia. Although this tribunal lacks the authority to impose conventional judicial sentences such as imprisonment or fines, its ruling carries significant legal weight. It affirmed that crimes committed against or impacting the environment—such as illegal mining that devastated forests and unsanctioned agricultural practices conducted without environmental safeguards—can constitute war crimes. This landmark decision laid important groundwork for a legal framework to guide future prosecutions of environmental crimes committed during armed conflict.
However, prosecution faces high thresholds. As highlighted earlier, Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute requires a very specific set of prohibited actions, each with detailed elements of the crime and significant evidentiary standards that must be met. Investigating such cases also demands specialised and sometimes unique knowledge and expertise. Recognising this, Ukraine has established the International Environmental Crimes Unit within the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor’s Office of the Prosecutor General’s Office—a specialised and targeted structural unit focused on these crimes. This vital structure aims to streamline investigations and build capacity.
Evidence collection presents another major challenge. Ukraine faces the reality that a significant portion of the territories where international crimes occur remain temporarily under occupation. In such contexts, Ukrainian law enforcement is often denied access, making it impossible to directly document crimes or gather critical evidence. When coupled with the high threshold for proving environmental crimes, the difficulties of investigation become even more apparent. Given these constraints, alternative methods for monitoring, verifying, and documenting crimes take on particular importance. Among these, open-source intelligence (OSINT) has proven invaluable in supporting criminal investigations. It is essential for the prosecution authorities to enhance their approach to incorporating OSINT into national investigations. However, due to limited experience and expertise in the operational use of OSINT, this potential remains underutilised, marking a key area where international support is urgently needed.
Ukraine has made it a priority to seek accountability for crimes against or affecting the environment—crimes that scar not only the landscape but also the lives and future of the country. Yet, no Ukrainian court has delivered a single verdict to date. The reasons are understandable: the exceptionally high threshold of proof required, the complexity and diversity of the evidence involved, and the relative inexperience of national authorities in prosecuting such cases.
At present, there is greater potential for investigating these crimes within Ukraine than through the International Criminal Court. However, while justice takes time, nature does not wait.
The environment knows no geographic or temporal boundaries. Damage inflicted in one country can disrupt ecosystems and send ripple effects across regions and generations. Ukraine—often called the “Green Heart of Europe”—hosts an extraordinary range of ecosystems: steppe grasslands, alpine meadows, ancient beech forests, wetlands, and peatlands. Harm to these habitats reaches far beyond Ukrainian territory, serving as a stark warning to the world.
That is why the pursuit of environmental justice must be a collective global effort. Just as ecosystems are interconnected, so too must be our commitment to protect them—and to hold accountable those who willfully destroy them. As the legal maxim reminds us, “Without accountability, justice is only a word.” Ignoring environmental crimes in Ukraine opens the door to consequences elsewhere, and that is a risk the world cannot—and must not—take.
