Determination of damage caused to land as a result of armed aggression and hostilities: legal issues

The article analyzes the current legal framework for determining the amount of damage caused to land as a result of armed aggression and hostilities, and also identifies the main problems in this area and develops proposals for their overcoming. Given that one of the negative consequences of the ongoing war in Ukraine is damage to the environment in general and to its individual elements in particular, it is urgent to determine the amount of such damage for further realization of the possibility of its compensation by the aggressor state. Thus, the developments of both practical and theoretical content on improving the existing procedures and methods for calculating environmental damage caused by armed aggression and hostilities become relevant, and this makes this article timely. As a result of the study of the legal framework for determining the damage caused to the land as a result of armed aggression and hostilities, the author concludes that the legislation does not sufficiently take into account the specifics of such damage. The author substantiates the expediency of expanding the “Methodology for Determining the Amount of Damage Caused to Land and Soils as a Result of Emergency Situations and/or Armed Aggression and Hostilities during Martial Law” with provisions on determining the damage caused by soil degradation caused by armed aggression. The author proves the need for an upward revision of the coefficients used in calculating the amount of damage caused by land contamination due to armed aggression/hostilities under the “Methodology for Determining the Amount of Damage Caused to Land and Soils as a Result of Emergency Situations and/or Armed Aggression and Hostilities during Martial Law”. It is established that the application of adjustment factors which take into account the ecological and economic value of land and are determined according to the norms developed in the pre-war period do not reflect the specifics of damage to land caused by armed aggression/ hostilities. The author argues that it is necessary to include private farms in the list of entities entitled to compensation for humanitarian demining of agricultural land. The author proposes to integrate the costs of humanitarian demining of agricultural land into the amount of damage caused to the land/soil.