Law. Human. Environment

Energy security strategy under martial law: Environmental risks and areas of their legal regulation

Bohdan Surzhok
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Abstract

The purpose of the study was to substantiate legal mechanisms for ensuring energy security under martial law, considering environmental risks, for the development of a comprehensive strategy focused on sustainable development. The study was conducted using systemic and structural, comparative, formal legal, and historical legal methods. The study systematised the environmental consequences of the destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as a result of Russian aggression through the development of a comprehensive methodology for assessing energy and environmental damage under martial law. A classification of the environmental costs of war has been drawn up across five categories, with a total monetary estimate exceeding USD 200 billion: greenhouse gas emissions from combat operations and reconstruction amount to USD 42.6 billion; fires caused by the war – USD 9.1 billion; toxic sediments following the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant – USD 31.5 million; construction waste and debris – USD 140 billion; contaminated and mined land – USD 9-10 billion. A comparative analysis of the impact of armed conflicts on energy systems across four regions of the world was conducted, revealing an evolutionary transformation of compensation mechanisms – from the successful Kuwaiti precedent, with 94% of claims paid, to ineffective contemporary mechanisms with no payments at all – thus confirming the critical dependence of effectiveness on the level of international political support. A comparative matrix of international precedents was created, which demonstrated the evolution of international legal mechanisms from a fragmentary response to systemic compensation institutions with the expansion of the subject composition of responsibility. Typological patterns of application of international legal instruments of compensation were revealed, in particular, a direct correlation between the effectiveness of compensation procedures and the level of international political support was established. The results of the study conceptualised the development of a new paradigm of national security based on a synergistic combination of energy and environmental legal mechanisms in the context of sustainable development

Keywords

ecocide; compensation mechanisms; international humanitarian law; ecosystem losses; greenhouse gases; restorative justice

Suggested citation
Surzhok, B. (2026). Energy security strategy under martial law: Environmental risks and areas of their legal regulation. Law. Human. Environment, 17(2), 28-53. https://doi.org/10.31548/law/2.2026.28
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