On April 29, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill that significantly increases penalties for violating environmental regulations in protected areas.

This was reported by the Minister of Environmental Protection, Svitlana Hrynchuk.

The bill proposes to raise fines for violations of conservation rules by 50 times:

• for individuals, fines will range from 8,500 to 17,000 UAH;
• for officials, fines will be from 17,000 to 25,500 UAH.

Currently, the fines for individuals range from 153 to 408 UAH, while for officials, they are between 255 and 510 UAH.

"These amounts do not serve as a deterrent. The cost of environmental destruction should not be less than a meal at a café. For instance, in 2024, 661 protocols were issued, and fines amounted to only 89,240 UAH. However, the actual damage to the protected areas during this period was over 430 million UAH," said Svitlana Hrynchuk.

According to her, the bill takes into account new environmental restrictions introduced by a law passed in January of this year, which significantly limited vehicle movement in protected areas.