Wars, in Ukraine as elsewhere, are always a disaster for people , but also for the environment. Modern weapons are devastating for ecology . They leave behind only desolation that destroys people but also nature for decades.
Attack on the environment
In a war, there is an attacker and an attacked who must defend himself. If the destruction of the environment is collateral damage of this confrontation, it is also a full-fledged strategy of the attacker today.
Subjected to bombings and fires, ecosystems are damaged or even destroyed. These weapons of environmental destruction are used to bring populations to their knees, show the attacker's ascendancy over a territory and leave a lasting mark of domination.
Beyond two armies fighting each other, deliberately destroying the entire environment of a city, a region or even a country can become a war objective in itself. And while destroying the enemy's environment is not a new strategy, current technological means make it a fearsomely effective weapon.
Destructive bombings

Bombing a city and its infrastructure, whether civilian or military, destroys buildings and everything they contain, especially electricity and water networks. The reduction of toxic materials to ashes generates dust and smoke that disperses into the environment and suffocates living beings on site.
This is why buildings are prime targets to leave no chance of survival for anything on site or in the surrounding area. This strategy, known as "scorched earth", isolates populations by depriving them of resources. A show of force that adds terror to the material and human damage.
Targeted infrastructures and nuclear power

An industrialized country like Ukraine, unfortunately, through its metallurgical and chemical factories and its numerous infrastructures installed in large cities (kyiv, Kharkiv or Mariupol) offers choice targets for the war led by Vladimir Putin.
In Ukraine, energy-related infrastructure such as power plants ( nuclear , hydroelectric) are the most likely to cause irreversible damage to the environment. This explains why pipelines, power plants, factories, water or fuel reserves, and military sites are prime targets. The destruction of these sites is strategic.
Today, the fear of the leaders would be that a nuclear power plant would be hit by a missile, and cause a nuclear accident. After pipelines have been sabotaged, refineries attacked, the fear of major damage to sensitive sites that could emit radioactive waste is real. Conducting such battles in Ukraine, in a country that has 15 nuclear reactors, is an unprecedented and worrying situation.
Ukraine: a large reservoir of threatened biodiversity






Ukraine is a country with an extremely rich biodiversity . With dozens of valuable wetlands, about forty reserves and national parks, and the famous Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, Ukraine is a sanctuary country whose many species, already endangered, are even more so today.
The degradation and fires, which burn forests and all materials in their path, have released toxic fumes and significant pollution of microparticles and heavy metals. In these areas, the air can become unbreathable. Dust gets everywhere and pollutes the air , but also the soil and water, contaminating entire areas whose ecosystems could, in the long term, never recover.
On the sea side, ports, strategic areas of prime importance, are also attacked and bombed. The entire marine environment is threatened: the coast, but also the Black Sea in the case of Ukraine. Satellite images have shown that fires in the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, in the south of Ukraine, are endangering one of the largest protected natural areas in the country as well as several endangered species. Marine and land animals and migratory birds are directly affected by the war. They may never again find an environment conducive to their survival. Not to mention the armored vehicles, which, without any consideration for the environment, cross the protected areas that they ransack with their troops.
Donbass region sacrificed
Before the current conflict broke out, Donbass, a region in eastern Ukraine, had already experienced (since 2014) clashes between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists. This war in Donbass offers a glimpse of what a larger-scale conflict can look like. Donbass, now devastated, is considered one of the most polluted areas in Europe. The demolition of mining areas leaves mines abandoned, dispersing toxic products that contaminate water and soil. Added to this is heavy metal and chemical pollution, due to the use of munitions, which has invaded the rivers and lakes of this region.
The impact of the war on nature in Ukraine is clear. The country is experiencing an environmental disaster, the extent and severity of which cannot yet be anticipated, and which will be partly irreversible. Just like all areas that are subject to armed conflicts in the world today.