Ecocide in Ukraine: The Role of Environmental Destruction in Hybrid Warfare

Research by: Chad Michael Briggs & Alketa Bucaj

Executive Summary

This article argues that the environmental destruction accompanying Russia’s war in Ukraine is not collateral damage but a deliberate instrument of hybrid warfare, calibrated to degrade resilience at four interlocking levels: individual, institutional, infrastructural, and international. Drawing on cases ranging from the Kakhovka Dam demolition and the February 2025 drone strike on the Chornobyl sarcophagus to the systematic mining of farmland across more than 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, the paper situates ecocide within the broader economic shock of the war — a 53 percent contraction in Ukrainian GDP and the closure or suspension of 64 percent of micro, small, and medium enterprises — and isolates the specifically environmental components of that damage, including USD 30–40 billion in projected demining costs, the loss of irrigation for more than 1.5 million acres of farmland following the Kakhovka breach, and cascading disruptions to global food, fertilizer, and energy markets that have hit import-dependent economies particularly hard. These environmental dimensions sit within a World Bank tally of USD 176 billion in direct physical damages and USD 524 billion in projected recovery needs. The contribution bridges between security studies and environmental science, two fields that have historically run in parallel rather than in dialogue, and demonstrates why supply chain resilience, ESG risk, post-conflict reconstruction, and reconstruction investment strategy can no longer treat ecological and security exposures as separate problems. Adversarial actors weaponize ecological systems to produce long-tail economic damage, and it is an essential element of postwar planning (with which Dr. Briggs is already involved via NATO).

To cite this article: Briggs, C. M., & Bucaj, A. (2026). Ecocide in Ukraine: The role of environmental destruction in hybrid warfare. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 68(3), 9–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2026.2632564

To access the article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2026.2632564

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