Making War Emissions Visible: Accounting Boundaries, Inventory Attribution and Climate Transparency in the Russia–Ukraine War

Abstract War-related greenhouse gas estimates are increasingly visible in climate diplomacy, yet their relationship to national emissions inventories remains unclear. This article asks how accounting boundaries and reporting rules shape the visibility and accountability of emissions associated with the Russia–Ukraine war. It combines a structured comparison of four successive published assessment vintages (18, 24, 36 and 48 months) with a source-category crosswalk between six conflict-related emission groups and the 2006 IPCC inventory architecture, as refined in 2019. The most recent assessment reports 311.4 MtCO₂e, including 73.3 MtCO₂e in projected reconstruction. The remaining 238.1 MtCO₂e is a reconstruction-excluded subtotal, not a verified inventory of exclusively realised emissions. Between the 36 -and 48-month assessments, the reported balance increased by 74.6 MtCO₂e, although updated estimates cannot be treated uncritically as independently observed annual flows. The crosswalk finds that the main reporting problem is fragmented attribution across source codes, jurisdictions, temporal horizons and international transport exclusions, rather than the complete absence of relevant inventory categories. The article develops a feasible voluntary, evidence-linked disclosure protocol alongside existing Paris Agreement reporting, without conflating event estimates with national totals or legal responsibility. It contributes a replicable comparative accounting framework and a politically bounded approach to conflict-related climate transparency.