Svitlana Hrynchuk's Ministry of Environmental Imitation

Massive fish kill, poisoned water, unbearable stench – two years ago, the Psel River in Poltava region became an ecological disaster zone. The reason was hundreds of tons of pig slurry residues washed into the reservoir by a storm. Today, just like two years ago, fish are dying in the Psel, the water quality does not meet standards by many indicators, and local residents have unusable wells. Tens of tons of feces are still accumulating in lagoons, which, instead of concrete, are built from soil and film. Ecologists accuse the Ministry of Environmental Protection of inaction. At the end of last year, Svitlana Hrynchuk's ministry approved an environmental impact assessment conclusion for a local enterprise. The document states that "there is no impact on surface waters" and "the impact on groundwater is insignificant," says Maria Bielkina, an expert from the Ecoaction NGO. The environmental community of Poltava region was shocked and outraged by this decision, reports UNN. 

This is just one of the scandals involving the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Lyudmyla Tsyhanok, President of the Association of Environmental Professionals (PAEW) trade union, believes that the ministry has failed in its work to set up a system for recording Russian Federation crimes against the environment. The environmental monitoring system has dozens of "white spots," with data that is either unavailable or has lost credibility.

"While we are fighting for every piece of land, we must also fight for the right to prove what exactly the enemy destroyed. What exactly was poisoned. What was ruined. What damage was done to our air, water, soil, biodiversity. There is still no effective automated monitoring system. Without this, there will be no reparations. There will be no justice in international courts. How can we prove the damage? With a drone photo? A two-page conclusion from the village council? Or analytics collected months after the explosion? To win a case in The Hague or Strasbourg, we need data that has legal force. Integrated monitoring systems, synchronized with European Copernicus, EEA, EPA," Tsyhanok notes.

"It has been said many times that the methods we use for assessment do not meet international standards and are based on the Soviet principle of maximum permissible concentrations. This is not an assessment of environmental impact. Environmental damage is the loss of part of ecosystem services…," explains Oleh Lystopad, an environmental expert from the ANTS network.

Under Hrynchuk, the system of fines for environmental damage has not been revised. The reform of environmental control, intended to "avoid corruption risks during business inspections and ensure the preservation of wildlife," remained at the level of declarations. More than a year ago, Hrynchuk's predecessors promised to "activate" it, and eventually, the new minister repeated the promise.

In April of this year, Svitlana Vasylivna again mentioned "an absolutely new body with new approaches," but to this day, the reform remains at the stage of "strategy development."

The issue of deregulation is not moving. The Ministry of Environmental Protection remains the most overregulated government body in the country. According to the decision of the interdepartmental deregulation group, Hrynchuk was supposed to cancel or digitize over 100 permits. However, the minister has done nothing to implement the decision.

The Ministry did not even initiate changes to the Environmental Policy Strategy, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada under the previous government in early 2019. 

Ecologists claim that Hrynchuk is only imitating work. 

"I would rename the Ministry of Environmental Protection to the Ministry of Imitation of Environmental Protection," says Oleh Lystopad. - In my opinion, I see no significant achievements during Ms. Svitlana Hrynchuk's tenure. If we look at her Facebook, we see meetings with representatives of international organizations, something discussed, something visited, but what are the results? None."

Volodymyr Boreiko, director of the public organization "Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center," assesses the ministry's activities as exclusively negative.

"The ministry does not develop or approve the concept of biodiversity conservation, the concept of protected area development, the concept of environmental education. No. It bends to Arakhamia, who is a hunter and an influential person. Despite environmental organizations being against it, she pushes through and approves the hunting strategy at the Government level," says Boreiko.

Animal rights activists picketed the ministry against the killing of animals – instead of dialoguing with eco-activists, the minister filed a complaint with… the SBU.

"An appeal to the SBU? What is this? Against one of the most influential environmental organizations, which has been working for about 30 years and has created about 600 protected objects. For criticizing Hrynchuk during a picket. The environmental protection system is simply collapsing," Boreiko indignantly states.

Ecologists call the minister's personnel policy incomprehensible and non-transparent.

"Recently, a new head of the Department of Protected Areas of the Ministry, Edgar Tokar, was appointed. This is a person who has neither specialized education nor work experience. Before that, this gentleman headed the Mukachevo employment center," says Oleh Lystopad.

The reason for personnel scandals is linked to Hrynchuk's lack of independence. To this day, she lacks agency, effectively remaining Herman Halushchenko's deputy in the status of minister. All important appointments to "resourceful" positions are controlled by Hrynchuk's advisor - former prosecutor Dmytro Korobchenko.

According to Olha Kosharna, an expert in nuclear energy and safety, in 2023, Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko first employed Korobchenko as the head of the legal department of the Electricity Market Operator, and then appointed him a member of the Supervisory Board of PJSC "Ternopiloblenergo."

"When Svitlana Hrynchuk was appointed minister at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Halushchenko assigned his man to her with the position of "advisor" - Dmytro Korobchenko. He is the one who "advises" on personnel matters. In my opinion, having a "supervisor" is very humiliating, especially since he behaves arrogantly," says Kosharna.

Sources within the ministry confirm Kosharna's words. The office of "supervisor" Korobchenko is located next to the minister's office. At the end of last year, Hryhoriy Ishchenko, who worked at JSC NNEGC "Energoatom," was appointed head of the State Agency for Exclusion Zone Management (DAZV). A month ago, Viktor Novikov, another representative of "Energoatom," was appointed the new chairman of the board of NAC "Nadrа Ukrainy."

Among the main failures of the ministry, Lyudmyla Tsyhanok particularly notes the lack of progress in the field of waste management reform.

"There is no electronic accounting. Accounting is not maintained. Subordinate legislation is mostly "still under development." Officials have focused only on relicensing, permits, and paperwork. Landfills are growing like mushrooms - chaotically, without control and without sorting. Local self-government is without powers, without tools, without clarity. Hundreds of destroyed buildings, broken warehouses (hazardous substances, a lot of particularly hazardous waste), field hospitals (medical waste), fragments of equipment, ammunition, petroleum products - by the ton. Who accounts for this? Who removes, sorts, disposes of it? There is no infrastructure, no reform, and instead of comprehensive actions, "experiments" are launched... You cannot launch an "experiment" where there is no system yet. It's like allowing planes to fly - without airports and dispatchers," explains Tsyhanok.

The situation is even worse, experts say, with regulatory documentation regarding chemical threats. There is no procedure for identifying chemical safety threats, no procedure for assessing the safety of chemical substances and compiling a chemical safety report, no procedure for monitoring chemical safety threats, and dozens (!) more regulatory documents.

Experts also complain about the disorder in national parks. The issue of taxation of natural reserve fund lands has not been settled – national parks owe local budgets hundreds of millions of hryvnias. This year, work on formalizing the right to use natural reserve fund lands, which are being lost due to land deals, has not even begun. National parks are being cut down, timber is either illegally removed or bought by intermediaries for next to nothing and resold to the population at much higher prices.  

"We caught employees of the Bila Ozero National Park in Kyiv region poaching. Based on our documents, the prosecutor's office opened two criminal cases. The former minister and deputy minister Krasnolutsky revoked logging permits. New people came, and they again approved these permits for poachers and are again cutting down oaks and pines with so-called selective logging. Hrynchuk has not created a single new reserve or national park. She dispersed people who, so to speak, understood something there, surrounded herself with incompetent "sycophants,"" says Boreiko.

Ecologists complain that the ministry did not care at all about the destruction of the forest in Markhalivka near Kyiv and the barbaric development of Polonyna Runa in Transcarpathia, for which foresters subordinate to the ministry cut down unique primeval forests. The ministry announced inspections, but construction on the polonyna continues. No one has been dismissed or brought to criminal responsibility for ecocide. Another imitation, experts say.

"The Ministry of Environmental Protection turned out to be not smart, but beautiful... Glossy reports funded by donors are not enough, action is needed. But there are no deep actions. Among other things, the situation is such that environmental protection in our country is actually carried out by the public, which is devoid of political influence," writes journalist Olena Mudra, who is dealing with the problem of the development of Polonyna Runa.

"The Ministry of Environmental Protection cannot be just a "ministry of permits and licenses." It is not a center for administering folders. And not an event agency with managers who beautifully speak about problems. It should be a think tank for green transformation - with vision, analytics, management levers, technical support for regions, responsibility to people. Paper imitation flourishes. But real changes are suffocating," says Lyudmyla Tsyhanok.

"Effective plans for responding to environmental risks," "mechanisms of responsibility for environmental damage" - tasks that the country's leadership set for the Ministry of Environmental Protection last autumn remained mere slogans. The interviewed experts agree that the minister failed to cope with any of the assessments she declared after her appointment.

Whether Hrynchuk will lose her position and whether real changes will occur in the ministry's work will be known next month.