Russia's Air Gets Dirty

Russia's War on Ukraine is affecting Russia's air quality, and not only in the areas where the attacks are occuring. The independent environmental publication Kedr released a report that examined “how the war with Ukraine is affecting the air that Russians breathe.” 

Following the lead of other countries, Russia announced a program of measures in 2019 to improve air quality in major cities. The goal of the federal “Clean Air” project was to reduce industrial emissions by 20 percent in 12 industrial centers by 2024. However, just two months after hostilities began, the timeline was revised and the target date was pushed back to 2026. Sanctions and the forced transition to domestically-produced equipment made it impossible to quickly implement programs to reduce emissions. The target date was then pushed back further, this time to 2030. 

Currently, in 80 percent of Russian cities, average annual concentrations of pollutants exceed the maximum permissible levels, and more than half of the country's urban population lives in areas with high or very high levels of air pollution. The levels of harmful substances in cities are either rising or remain consistently high. A contributing factor is that, in 2022, Russia resumed production of Euro 0-class cars, meaning that high levels of motor vehicle pollution were once again allowed. The expansion of military industrial production has also led to additional increases in emissions. 

Added to all this are the pollution impacts of Ukraine's attack on Russian oil refineries. These include not only dramatic “oil rains” but also fires that emit harmful substances. Such incidents have occurred in Leningrad, Samara, Perm, and other regions. Until recently, oil rains have only occurred in southern Russia. Yet, after the June 18 attack on the Moscow refinery in Kapotnya, polluted precipitation was recorded for the first time in Moscow region.

It is difficult to assess the cumulative impact of such incidents on overall air quality due to the limited availability of independent data. Regardless, as Kedr emphasizes, this is not just a matter of isolated incidents, but of a gradual shift in the very nature of pollution. And this, of course, leaves Russia out of step with the global trend toward improving air quality. 

It’s difficult, for the same reasons (the lack of reliable, independent statistics and sociological data), to elicit what Russians think about all of this. But it seems that residents of a country at war, teetering on the brink of economic collapse, have more pressing concerns. “Don’t worry, it’ll all wash away, and the plant will be rebuilt,” a resident of the city of Zheleznodorozhny, where an oil rain fell on June 18, wrote in her building’s chat group. “A couple of showers will wash it away; we’ve seen worse. It’s just soot and fuel oil – it could have been radioactive ash.”