War in Ukraine: agricultural soil degradation and pollution and its consequences

Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is causing irreparable damage to its soil, irrigation system, and agricultural infrastructure and has rendered 5 million hectares of its agricultural land unusable. The work is devoted to the review and analysis of scientific literary sources and information bases of documents of the UN, FAO, WHO, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine and generalization of the impact of military actions on soil pollution and degradation of agricultural lands and subsequent contamination of food raw materials and food products. The purpose of the work. Conduct an analysis of scientific data on the condition of the soils of agricultural lands of Ukraine, in the conditions of hostilities of armed aggression of the Russian Federation, and the possibility of further influence of this condition on plant raw materials and food products. Materials and methods. Informative, bibliographic, normative and legal. The following methods were used: system-structural, formal-logical, bibliographic, and the method of informal (traditional) analysis. The main results. Scientific sources were analyzed that made it possible to find out the state of the soils of Ukraine in the conditions of hostilities. The main sources of their chemical pollution and degradation have been established. The impact of military actions on the condition of the soils of arable lands is summarized. It was found that heavy metals are one of the main factors of chemical soil pollution. It was determined that the result of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is the destruction of agricultural lands. It is outlined that the soil of agricultural lands contaminated by the war is a potential source of emission of harmful substances from the soil into food raw materials, which creates a significant threat of their contamination of food products. Keywords. Soils, agricultural lands, armed aggression, soil degradation, soil pollution, contamination of food raw materials and food products.