War Brought Ukraine Worst Year for Wildfires

Reuters

18:33 JST, April 11, 2025

BRUSSELS (Reuters) — Last year was Ukraine’s worst year for wildfires in more than three decades of record-keeping, as shelling along front lines in the war with Russia triggered an unprecedented number of blazes, scientists said.

Forest fires in Ukraine in 2024 burned more than twice the area destroyed by fire in the entire 27-country European Union in 2024, the EU’s Joint Research Centre — its independent science research service — said in a report published last month.

Satellite data showed nearly 9,000 fires torched a total of 965,000 hectares in Ukraine in 2024. Ukraine has around 10 million hectares of forest. Around a third of the area burned last year was farmland.

For comparison, the EU member state with the most land burnt last year was Portugal, which lost 147,000 hectares — its worst annual total since 2017.

The JRC said satellite data showed the fires were concentrated in Ukraine’s east, in areas apparently in close proximity to front lines of the war.