The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has adopted a resolution aimed to accelerate the return to safe use of agricultural land that is being cultivated despite the risk of explosive objects.

The changes concern the Procedure for Inspecting Land Plots whose owners or tenants are granted tax relief due to possible contamination of the land.

From now on, local authorities will check whether land suspected of being contaminated is being used for its intended purpose. The data obtained will be forwarded to the Humanitarian Demining Centre and the Mine Action Centre.

Once it has been confirmed that the land is actually being cultivated, tax relief for the owner or tenant will be cancelled.

Based on information from local authorities, the relevant centres will decide whether to conduct a non-technical survey to confirm or refute the fact of contamination.

This will make communities an active part of the system – not just observers, but participants in the process of safely returning land to full use.

Preliminary data shows that 10,100 hectares of land currently being cultivated are also areas with probable or confirmed contamination status.

‘It is important for us to conduct a non-technical survey of these areas as soon as possible, because this is primarily about the safety of the people who work on them. In addition, this is an opportunity to quickly free up considerable areas if no threats are found. Farmers who have land safety certificates will find it easier to obtain loans and sell their harvest. Such steps will increase the country’s economic activity and export potential,’ said Oleksii Sobolev, Minister of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine.

There was previously no systematic verification of the actual use of land that was subject to tax relief due to probable contamination.

The GRIT digital platform shows that most of the land that is both cultivated and has probable or confirmed contamination status is located in Kharkiv, Kherson, and Mykolaiv regions.

For reference

Under the state programme to compensate for the cost of humanitarian demining, more than 13,700 hectares of agricultural land have already been cleared. The average cost of demining one hectare is UAH 59,400.

The updated procedure is not just about tax relief or control. It is about systematic accounting of losses and planning for recovery.

Note that Pavlo Ostapenko, Head of the NGO Ukrainian Researchers’ Society, emphasised in an interview with the Decentralisation portal that all de-occupied communities must conduct a comprehensive assessment of their losses – not only infrastructural, but also environmental, particularly with regard to arable land. Such an assessment should form the basis of the community’s development strategy and recovery plan.

Based on the organization's research, more than 800,000 agricultural land plots affected by combat operations have already been identified in five regions, with total losses amounting to UAH 123 billion for arable land alone.