Forest fires have NOW caused more than UAH 1 trillion in damage across Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, with the destruction of timber stands accounting for the bulk of the country’s mounting environmental losses. That is according to the State Enterprise Forests of Ukraine, the government body responsible for managing the nation’s forest fund.
Environmental inspectors estimate that damage rose by a further UAH 36.7 billion between 15 and 22 May 2026 alone, with more than UAH 36.3 billion of that total tied directly to forest fires and the loss of other plantations. The weekly increase points to a war that continues to consume forest assets at a pace no peacetime disturbance has matched.
Roughly 165,000 hectares of forest have burned since the war began, a figure that has climbed steadily across more than four years of conflict. Most of the fires trace back to Russian shelling and combat operations concentrated in the frontline and border regions.
The highest concentration of fires last week struck the Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions, where foresters and emergency rescuers fought blazes that combat conditions made far harder to reach. In the frontline, crews extinguished several large fires covering more than 20 hectares whilst working amid live mine danger.
“Extinguishing was complicated by the presence of explosive objects,” Forests of Ukraine said.
Foresters extinguished 22 separate fires totalling 28.6 hectares over the most recent week, 14 of them caused directly by Russian strikes and a further seven sparked by enemy drone attacks in the Chernihiv region. The remaining ignitions were blamed on residents’ careless handling of fire across the Rivne, Volyn, Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
New ignitions have since broken out across the Chernihiv region, particularly in the Pereliub forestry, where a fire covering 5,800 hectares raged only weeks earlier. The enterprise has separately distanced itself from a blaze on the slopes of Mount Pikuy in the Carpathians, noting the fire began outside its forest fund on land managed by the Boykivshchyna National Nature Park.
The losses fall on a forest estate already under severe pressure, with logging volumes down sharply since the invasion and Ukraine exporting more than US$2 billion in wood and wood products as recently as 2021. Kyiv has since extended a zero-quota licensing regime barring exports of unprocessed timber and fuelwood through the end of 2026, a measure designed to steer scarce raw material toward domestic processors and rural heating supply.
Wood Central understands that recovery will demand years of demining, replanting and restoration before scorched stands return to productive use, even as Ukraine works to expand domestic logging and timber processing and prepares to align with the EU Deforestation Regulation. Sustained investment on that scale will be hard to summon whilst the war shows no sign of easing.
