Wildfires in Ukraine's war zone and on the Kinburn Spit, 2022–2025

The Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG), using NASA fire-detection data with a minimum 100 m fire radius, counted at least 37,867 fires between 24 February and 23 June 2022, covering 100,662.2339 ha (36,154 ha forest and 10,250 ha grass ecosystems), and found that “every third hectare of Ukraine destroyed by fire is a protected area”; the authors say the true area is larger. Counts from EFFIS satellite mapping of fires of 5 ha or more, reported by Slovo i Dilo (15 May 2026), were 6,309 fires and about 500,000 ha in 2022 (over three-quarters agricultural land), 2,185 fires and 226,000 ha in 2023 (the largest over 4,000 ha, in Kherson Oblast), and 9,116 fires and 660,000 ha in 2025 (the largest over 10,000 ha, in occupied Donetsk Oblast). EFFIS data for Ukraine also include urban and agricultural fires, so they are “not directly comparable” with other countries and not all fires are war-related.

For 2024 the figures are 8,753 fires and 965,000 ha, more than twice the EU's burnt area, according to EU Joint Research Centre satellite data as reported; about a third was farmland. Reuters (26 March 2025) reported that this was the worst year since at least 1990, per a cross-check with Ukraine's National University of Life and Environmental Sciences. The JRC wrote on 5 December 2025 that “Ukraine accounted for half of the total area burnt within EU Civil Protection Mechanism countries”, “with most wildfires seen across the combat frontlines”. Maksym Matsala of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences told Reuters that artillery and falling shells are the main ignition cause and that “If war is continuous, then sooner or later there will be a lot of inaccessible areas”. Ukraine's State Emergency Service links fires to weather, Russian strikes and human carelessness (via Slovo i Dilo, no figures).

The NGL.media investigation (8 April 2024, reported by Euromaidan Press) used satellite imagery to find over 60,000 ha of forest destroyed in occupied and front-line areas in two years, valued at direct timber value only at no less than UAH 14 billion (about USD 360 million): “It doesn't include the environmental consequences”.

On the Kinburn Peninsula, which holds Biloberezhzhia Sviatoslava National Nature Park, Kinburn Spit Regional Landscape Park and the Volyzhyn forest of the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, citing the national park's Sentinel-2 monitoring (Ukrainska Pravda, 11 May 2023), reported 131 fires in 2023 so far, over 5,000 ha of the national park affected and up to 4 million trees affected. The Ministry said that “The majority of the fires had a recurring nature and affected the same area several times” and that “It will only be possible to calculate the exact damage caused by the fires after this territory is liberated”. In the same statement it cited a war-wide damage estimate of at least UAH 202 billion, which is not specific to Kinburn.