Ukraine has charged a former forester from the Berehomet branch of State Enterprise Forests of Ukraine over an illegal logging scheme inside the Vyzhnytskyi National Nature Park, with prosecutors alleging he ran an unpermitted cut under the cover of ‘sanitary felling’ and inflicted more than UAH 5 million (around US$114,000) in environmental damage inside the park.
That is according to the Chernivtsi Regional Prosecutor’s Office, which announced the charges today under Part 3 of Article 365 and Part 4 of Article 246 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, for abuse of official powers and illegal logging within Ukraine’s nature reserve fund.
The prosecution adds to a growing pattern of Ukrainian forestry-crime cases centred on so-called ‘sanitary felling’, a loophole that WWF-Ukraine has flagged as a cover that feeds trafficked logs through the Carpathians into European furniture supply chains. Berehomet Forestry operates in the Carpathian belt, where WWF-Ukraine Forest Practice head Mykhailo Bohomaz has documented the worst of the sanitary-felling abuse.
The Specialised Ecological Prosecutors allege that the former forester used his powers in October 2024 to run illegal logging inside the reserve, personally marking the cut areas and admitting workers without permits. A new forest road was then laid through the park to haul the timber out, with prosecutors alleging it also served as a pretext for felling further unmarked trees outside any permit.
To cover the operation’s tracks, stumps from felled trees were uprooted and buried with soil, disguising the illegal cut as routine maintenance. Under the former forester’s instructions, “not only trees intended for felling were destroyed, but also so-called unmarked trees,” the prosecutor’s office said, with at least 28 trees of different species felled under the scheme.
The case is the latest forestry-crime prosecution targeting State Enterprise Forests of Ukraine staff, following July’s charges against eight Forestry Innovation and Analytical Centre employees and five Forests of Ukraine officials over manipulation of the Unified State Electronic Timber Accounting System, which prosecutors estimated at more than UAH 167 million (US$3.8 million) in damages.
Ukrainian illegal logging volumes last year reached more than 39,600 cubic metres — a 30.7 per cent jump on 2023 and the highest tally in four years, according to annual analysis by the NGO Forest Initiatives and Society. The numbers feed directly into EU deliberations over Ukraine’s EUDR country-risk status, with Poland already blocking Ukrainian timber consignments at the border since March 2025 on compliance grounds.
The pre-trial investigation is ongoing, with Chernivtsi Specialised Ecological Prosecutors continuing to identify other individuals involved in the scheme. Brussels is watching Kyiv’s EUDR ‘low-risk’ designation closely, with each new forestry-crime prosecution feeding into the European Commission’s next country-risk review.
