Since Feb. 24, 2022, Russia has been waging simultaneous wars in Ukraine: a conventional one, hybrid or cyber warfare, and one against the environment, or “ecocide.”
Ecocide, used as a weapon of war, takes place alongside the systematic destruction of the country’s civilian infrastructure and energy network. But ecocide is not just the collateral damage of conventional warfare; in the case of Ukraine, its aim is to make the country’s regions uninhabitable for civilian life.
Russia is making sure that it harms Ukraine’s military campaign as much as possible by destroying infrastructure and roads and forcing authorities to invest time and resources in their reconstruction. Every resource invested in saving or rebuilding a region, whether human or material, deprives the military-industrial complex of the same resource. This is a broad-spectrum war tactic aimed at limiting Ukrainian capabilities in several sectors, particularly in the military sector.
