Government urged to establish ‘ecological rehabilitation center’ for Donbas

Serhiy Ivaniuta, the deputy head of the Energy and Technogenic Safety Department of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, made the corresponding statement during the round table meeting "Countering the environmental and technogenic threats in the zone of military conflict in eastern Ukraine," an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The problem of environmental threats in eastern Ukraine is systemic, complicated and has a negative impact on the population of the region. Over the past years, there has been no possibility to assess the damage caused to the ecosystem, the industrial facilities in the territory of the military conflict, while the implementation of the environmental monitoring system is very relevant... We have prepared the corresponding analysis, noting that the environmental consequences of the military conflict in eastern Ukraine should be included in the list of threats to the national security," the expert said.

There are many environmental and man-made hazards in eastern Ukraine, he noted. “Among the environmental hazards, the meteorological phenomena and dangerous hydrological processes can be mentioned. The man-made hazards are caused by the presence of potentially dangerous facilities in the region. A significant number of them are the enterprises of the metallurgical, coal, machine-building complexes and others," the expert informed.

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