If Russia embarks on a full-scale invasion of Ukraine—as military maneuvering suggests it might—US intelligence officials EstimateBetween 25,000 and 50,000 civilians could be killed. Additional 5,000 to 25,000. And 3,000 to 10,000 Russian soldiers could be killed. Although the human cost would be high, a large-scale military invasion could also have long-lasting effects on the environment in Ukraine.
Russia has amassed a large array of weapons within striking proximity of Ukraine, including tanks and artillery guns as well as rocket launchers, ballistic Missile Systems, infantry fighting vehicles, and ballistic missile systems. According toThe Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Russian military forces are in the region and could be used to launch a large-scale invasion against Ukraine. According to Tyson Wetzel, a senior US Air Force fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Timing is everything; there are some observers. Already theorizedPresident Vladimir Putin waits for a hard freeze in order to stop a ground invasion. It would be difficult to move heavy vehicles over soft or frozen ground. This could also cause damage to sensitive wetlands.
One possible invasion route for Russian military forces could be through the Chernobyl Exclusion Area. “The delivery of air-to-surface munitions, artillery, mortar and multiple rocket-launcher fire in the Belarus-Ukraine border area could also disperse radioactive debris in the soil,” Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer TelledThe Washington Post.
The long-running Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Ukraine’s eastern region has already had serious environmental consequences. A full-scale Russian invasion could only exacerbate these problems.
The eight-year-old conflict with Russian-backed separatists from the eastern Luhansk, Donetsk, and Donetsk regions has been ongoing for eight years. 14,000 people were killedThis has demonstrated how war can lead to environmental problems. This area, part of the Donbas—short for Donetsky Bassein or “Donets coal basin”—is one of the world’s largest coal mining regions, containing 900 active and inactive mines, as Kristina Hook and Richard Marcantonio reported for the BulletinIn 2018. These mines average more than 2,300 feet deep and must be regularly pumped to prevent groundwater flooding. The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources had identified 4,240 sites that could be considered potentially hazardous before the conflict. These were due to methane, hydro-dynamics and radiation. These sites were monitored by the ministry before the war began to manage health and environmental risks.
But wartime limits the government’s ability to monitor and resolve environmental hazards. Hook and Marcantonio report that trash removal and wastewater treatment have been hampered by degrading and damaged infrastructure. As of 2018, household and commercial sewage were still being drained into the Donetsk River. This led to an increase in fecal coliform levels.
Further concerning was the fact that 35 mines were identified by the ministry in 2016 as having stopped groundwater pumping, causing them to flood. Floodwaters can displace heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic, and contaminate groundwater. In some cases, these sites were originally mined via nuclear detonations, meaning they’re full of irradiated debris which could be carried out by floodwaters if they aren’t regularly pumped. 55 of the 66 tested drinking water sites were deemed un-potable by 2016. Three of them had significantly higher radiation levels.
In 2018, Ukraine’s minister of ecology, Ostap Semerak, Warned of a potential “second Chernobyl” if Russian-backed separatists intentionally flooded the abandoned YunKom coal mine, where underground nuclear tests in 1979 created a cavernous glass-lined chamber almost 3,000 feet underground called the Object Klivazh. However, the separatists seized control of the YunKom coal mine in April 1979. Did exactly thatTurn off the pumps to allow low-level radioactive waste to flow with the floodwaters.
The conflict has also limited environmental management of industrial sites. Residents of Mariupol are subject to constant belching from smoke and soot from two steel plants and shelling and rocket fires from Russia. “You can see the smoke—sometimes it’s orange; sometimes it’s gray. There’s a sour smell,” Viktoriia Pikuz, a teacher who lives about half a mile from the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works, Telled National Geographic2021. The group that owns the plants’ environmental management director blamed the slow pace of environmental upgrades on Russia’s ongoing conflict. This has led to a dearth of skilled engineers and construction professionals in the area and forced the companies into directing limited resources to repair the facilities that have been affected by fighting.
The Ukraine Crisis Media Center Moreover, it has been highlightedThe increased danger of forest fires due to military fires and explosions, as was the case when 20,000 ha in the Luhansk area burned in 2020.
These environmental risks are not just limited to Donbas. The beaches and fields surrounding Berdianske in Zaporizhia’s province of Zaporizhia are littered with landmines. It is located seven miles from Mariupol. Washington Post reportedIn 2021. Groundwater and soil can be contaminated by unexploded or partially exploded weapons. Swimming and fishing should be avoided.
And while the situation in Donbas was bad in 2018, it had—and has—the potential to become much worse. “One barrage of misfired artillery shells could set in motion a chain reaction that would render large parts of the region uninhabitable, spilling toxic waste into rivers and groundwater, making living there impossible,” Wim Zwijnenburg, a Humanitarian Disarmament Project Leader for the Dutch peace organization PAX, ObservedIn 2018.
Then there is the possibility that Russia could—intentionally or not—strike one of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear power reactors, Writes Bennett Ramberg, a former foreign affairs officer in the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and the author of Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy. Located at four different sites around the country, these reactors supply approximately half of the country’s energy needs, and attacking them would significantly hamstring a military response by Ukraine—but not without turning the reactors into radioactive mines. Radioactive debris that is released from an attack against one or more power plants could spread thousands of miles across the surrounding region, including parts of Russia. Even if Putin didn’t order a strike against a nuclear power station, many unplanned events happen in the fogs of war. Or, as Ramberg writes, in war “[b]ad stuff happens.”