The price of firewood in Ukraine has increased by 1,5-3 times in a month; people are cutting down forests en masse because they cannot provide heating with gas and electricity.
The head of the Center for Analysis and Strategies, Igor Chalenko, stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The situation is extremely specific. Over the past month, the price of firewood has actually increased by one and a half times. This is if you stand in line for a month and a half now. Or you can buy firewood for tomorrow, but then the price is three times higher than what we had a month ago. That is, today the demand is simply amazing.
Of course, most citizens do not buy firewood from forestry departments, they buy it from resellers, so the standards that the ministry approves today do not reach our citizens.
The problem today is that if we talk about regional gas and heating, then today we have a deficit of the resource itself - 3 billion cubic meters. gas for the heating season. If we are talking about electricity, then we actually have a shortage of coal - 2,2 million tons of coal at thermal power plants.
But if we are talking about firewood, then we all understand perfectly well that people see that there are forest plantations that have not been cut down today. There is a great risk that they will continue to actively cut down forest belts and forest areas in general due to the fact that people simply need to stay warm, despite the fact that we have criminal liability for deforestation, up to 3 years in prison.
However, I think that if we have real problems with heating in terms of limited gas supplies and there are power outages, it is obvious that people will go into the forests and try to warm up in any way,” said Igor Chalenko.