In three months, 200 thousand tons of shell rock were illegally dug in Odesa region

Environmental prosecutors, along with police officers, exposed a criminal group that was systematically illegally mining limestone outside the designated area and without permits in the field in Odesa Oblast.

This was reported by the press service of the Odesa Regional Prosecutor's Office.

It has been established that from December 2025 to March 2026, the group members, in violation of the law, illegally extracted minerals of national importance in a natural deposit in the Oknyansky district of the region using stone-cutting machines. The official discovery and development of the deposit dates back to 1970.

"Based on the evidence collected, the prosecutor's office served a notice of suspicion to seven people involved in the crime: the director of the mining company, the head of the site, three miners, and two of their accomplices," said Artur Kotenko, the prosecutor in the criminal proceedings.

The mining was carried out on a land plot that is not registered in the State Land Cadastre. The approximate area of land where the illegal mining was carried out is about 20 hectares. The total volume of illegally extracted limestone is about 12 thousand units with a total weight of more than 204 thousand tons, which was stored near the entrance to the mine. The amount of damage caused to the environment is almost UAH 1.3 million.

The prosecutor's office charges all the suspects with illegal mining of mineral resources of national importance committed in collusion by a group of people. At the request of the prosecutors, the suspects were chosen as a preventive measure in the form of detention with an alternative to bail.

Illegal limestone mining in Odesa region has turned into an organized scheme using Soviet-era mining infrastructure. Earlier, the court had already imposed a preventive measure on one of the participants in the scheme, and the environmental damage exceeded one million hryvnias.

Кирило Бойко