UDS Named a Finalist of the Partnership for Sustainability Award 2025 in the “Recovery of Ukraine” Category

Recently, the official award ceremony of the Partnership for Sustainability Award 2025 took place — an annual international award of the UN Global Compact in Ukraine, which recognizes the best partnership projects in the fields of sustainable development and ESG.

This year, Ukrainian Demining Services LLC (UDS) were named finalists in the “Recovery of Ukraine” category, selected from more than 150 applications from 22 countries worldwide, evaluated by an independent international jury that included experts from Harvard University, the London School of Economics, the World Economic Forum, and other leading institutions.

For the competition, UDS submitted the “Free Forest” project, aimed at the humanitarian demining of Ukraine’s forests. In the Mykolaiv region, approximately 25,000 hectares of forests are contaminated with explosive remnants of war. This poses risks to people, increases the threat of forest fires, and makes ecosystem recovery impossible. Forests are the lungs of the planet. Without clearing war-contaminated land, reforestation and renewal of the regional forest fund cannot take place. Due to critically insufficient funding for demining needs, UDS, as a socially responsible company, made the decision to carry out demining operations in this region.

To implement the project, UDS deployed Bozena 5+ demining machines. As a result, in 2024 non-technical and technical surveys were conducted, and 21.78 hectares of forest areas were released, enabling SE “Forests of Ukraine” to plant approximately 43,000 trees and begin restoring forest ecosystems.

The project was implemented in partnership with the State Forest Resources Agency of Ukraine and SE “Forests of Ukraine”, coordinated by the Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration, with the involvement of relevant state institutions.

💬 “The ‘Free Forest’ project is about recovery that begins with safety. Demining forests is a complex and responsible task, as it concerns not only risks to people but also the protection of ecosystems and the prevention of fires. We are grateful to our partners for their trust and cooperation: the cleared areas have already made it possible to restore forests and plant new trees. Projects like this form a practical foundation for Ukraine’s sustainable recovery,” — Oleksandr Romaniuk, Director of Economics at UDS.

We continue to bring war-contaminated land back to life, work in partnership, and implement international ESG standards.