Just 200,000 Christmas Trees were cut down and sold in Ukraine last year—a sharp reduction from 2021, when, before Russia’s invasion, authorities felled (and sold) more than 445,000 trees to nationals in timber for Christmas. That is according to Ukraine’s State Forestry Agency, highlighting the impact that the full-scale war has placed on Ukraine’s psyche and landscape over the three years of total conflict.
“Since the beginning of the full-scale war, sales of Christmas trees have halved,” a spokesperson from the State Forestry Agency told the media yesterday: “In 2021, 445 thousand trees were sold; in 2022 – 206 thousand. Last year, sales increased by 20% to 247.5 thousand. This year, forestries plan to sell 200 thousand Christmas trees.”
In terms of total trees grown across Ukraine, “1.07 million coniferous trees were grown by forestry enterprises on special plantations (in 2024),” the spokesperson said: “This is half as many as in 2021 – 2.05 million trees. Of these, 52% are pine trees, 44% are fir trees, and the remaining 4.5% are other coniferous species.”
After 1000 Days of War, Ukraine’s Forests Are in Russia’s Crosshairs
In November, Wood Central revealed that Ukraine’s once-great forests have been devastated in the hellscape of war. So far, at least 1.7 million hectares of Ukrainian forests have been destroyed in the theatre of war – with the level of destruction coming as the casualties in the meatgrinder have passed 1 million dead or wounded.
The vast majority of these forests are in Russian-occupied regions (making up 20% of the country’s landmass) and are dense and easily flammable pine forests—mostly Chalk pine, a subspecies of Scots pine—subject to heavy aerial bombardment or shelled so intensively that they have been ground down into nothing more than a field of stumps.
Last year, Wood Central revealed that occupied forest areas and forest areas on the front line of battle equated “to more than 1 million hectares of areas designated for sustainable forest management,” with heavy disturbance in aboveground ecosystems, soils and water systems causing irreversible damage to forest health. As it stands, Ukrainian forests are now amongst the most dangerous on earth, with 425,000 hectares of forest found to be contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance, an area half the size of Cyprus.
- Click here to read more about Ukraine’s challenges in reconstructing its forests.
