yesterday at 12:29
,Germany
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the «Green Country» program in June 2021 with an ambitious goal — to plant one billion trees within three years and increase forest area by one million hectares over ten years. At the end of November 2025, foresters reported the planting of the «billionth tree» on the grounds of the Central Military Hospital in Kyiv and in various regions. However, the real results of the program raise doubts.
Most plantings under the program are routine restoration efforts following logging. «This is not about creating new forest areas, but merely restoring them on logged sites… This is their duty.» Over four years, new forests have appeared on only 15,000 hectares, which accounts for just 0.15% of Ukraine's total forest area. «Foresters have mostly been routinely restoring forests after logging… and called it a billion trees.»
The reduction in plantings is attributed to a shift from clear-cutting to selective logging, which allows forests to regenerate naturally. «In 99.9% of cases, forests regenerate wonderfully on their own,» notes expert Petro Testov. Legislative changes in 2016 and 2021 have enabled gradual tree felling and limited the scope of clear-cutting, creating a «window» for seed germination.
Analysis of new plantings shows an increase in area, but often at the expense of valuable ecosystems. «In other regions, they’ve been afforesting everything indiscriminately, including steppes and meadows.» An example from Chernihiv Oblast: «they effectively destroyed a steppe area.» Most lands allocated for afforestation were historically steppes or hard-to-reach areas, which threatens ecological balance. «Destroying one ecosystem to create another is nonsense.»
Mass afforestation of clearings and hayfields also harms biodiversity. «When everything is completely planted with trees, it effectively strikes a blow to forest biodiversity.» On a positive note, the adoption of a law on self-sown forests offers a chance to officially recognize natural growth and expand the forest fund.
The afforestation system does not cover degraded, low-productivity, or industrially damaged lands, which could provide hundreds of thousands of hectares for new forests. «Within the official layers of the State Geocadastre, it would be realistic to obtain several hundred thousand hectares for afforestation.»
Currently, communities are reluctant to transfer self-sown forests, and unclaimed forests remain neglected. «Such areas will be developed for construction… If they’re remote, they’re subject to illegal logging.» An example from Rivne Oblast: illegal logging in the «unclaimed» Selyansky Forest destroyed half a million trees, with damages amounting to 3.4 billion UAH.
The «Green Country» program has fulfilled only part of its objectives: routine forest restoration and localized new plantings. Systemic issues persist: afforestation of valuable ecosystems, insufficient control over self-sown and unclaimed forests, low capacity in the forestry sector, and weak centralization of afforestation policies. A billion trees in Ukraine exist only on paper for now, and real forest growth remains a significant challenge.
