Ukraine will claim $43 billion in climate compensation from Russia to help fund a planet-friendly rebuild after the war, it announced at the COP30 climate talks in Brazil today. Speaking at a side event, the Deputy Minister for Economy, Environment and Agriculture, Pavlo Kartashov, said: “In many ways, Russia is fighting a dirty war and our climate is also a casualty. The vast amounts of fuel burned, forests scorched, buildings destroyed, concrete and steel used, all these things are essentially ‘conflict carbon’ and have a considerable climate cost. We in Ukraine face brutality directly, but the climate shockwaves of this aggression will be felt well beyond our borders and into the future.” Read the full press release here.
It’s not easy for NGOs to grab headlines at a COP without major effort. Thankfully, we had a newsworthy story to tell and reliable channels into a Ukrainian ministry, allowing me to effectively pitch on behalf of the ministry. The push worked well, so much so that the minister was overwhelmed with interview requests and had to start turning them down. It generated over 500 articles spanning 65 countries, though the majority were in Germany, Ukraine, the US and Italy, strategic countries for Ukraine. This despite the unfolding at the time of a high profile corruption scandal in the country (top story in the Polish daily below, while ours appears below to the left).
