For The First Time In History, Ukraine Is Preparing A $44 Billion Lawsuit Against Russia
- 19.11.2025, 12:45
Reuters revealed the details.
Ukraine will demand nearly $44 billion in compensation from Russia for damages from climate warming caused by increased emissions during the fighting.
Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Economy, Environment and Agriculture Pavel Kartashov told Reuters on the sidelines of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil.
The move could be the first time in history that a country is seeking damages for increased atmospheric emissions, particularly from fossil fuels, cement and steel used in war, and the destruction of trees by fires.
"A lot of damage has been done to water, land and forests. We have a huge amount of additional CO₂ and greenhouse gas emissions," Kartashov notes.
Dutch carbon accounting expert Lennard de Klerk estimates that the war has resulted in about 237 million tons of additional CO₂-equivalent emissions since Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That is almost equal to the annual emissions of Ireland, Belgium and Austria combined.
De Clercq told Reuters he helped Ukraine calculate the loss figure based on a study published in the journal Nature in 2022 that estimates the so-called social cost of carbon - an estimate of the damage to society from CO₂ - at about $185 per ton.
He said Ukraine was preparing to sue through a new compensation process being introduced by the Council of Europe, which has already received about 70,000 claims from Ukrainian citizens for wartime damages.
It remains unclear to Reuters where the compensation will come from. De Klerk speculates that billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets could be used to cover the lawsuits.
How Russia is poisoning the nature of Ukraine and the world
In addition to increasing CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere due to fighting and war crimes like blowing up the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power plant, the occupiers are polluting the waters of the Black Sea on a large scale. Navy spokesman Dmitry Pletenchuk says that the water body is balancing on the edge, many experts among themselves already call the Black Sea "dead".
At the same time, fish in the Black Sea may become toxic due to the spill of Russian oil products. Due to emissions, the oxygen regime in the aquatic environment changes, and swarms of migrating fish can accumulate toxic substances, which will further affect the food chain - fish-eating birds, cetaceans, and humans.