The territories located near the Bukovel resort in the village of Polyanytsia, Nadvirna district of Ivano-Frankivsk region, have been recognized as illegally removed from state ownership and returned to the state.

This concerns 20 plots of forest fund land that were actually prepared for further tourist development.

The relevant decision was made by the court following a lawsuit from the Office of the Attorney General.

In 2022, the plots were registered as private property based on forged state acts, which created a legal basis for their further use for cottage settlements, hotels, and tourist infrastructure in one of the most expensive regions of the Carpathians.

However, in fact, these territories:

• belong to forest management lands;
  
• are in use by a state forestry enterprise;
  
• are covered with beech-fir forests approximately a century old;
  
• have not been removed from the forest fund, and no decisions have been made by authorized bodies to change their intended use.

Victoria Sheksheyeva, Deputy Head of the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office of the Attorney General, noted that construction on forest-covered lands contradicts the Framework Convention on the Protection and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians, ratified by Ukraine. It also does not comply with the State Environmental Policy Strategy of Ukraine until 2030, which identifies increasing forest cover as one of its strategic goals.

The disputed plots were illegally registered in the State Land Cadastre. The court annulled this registration and returned the lands to the state. This will allow them to be formed and accounted for as forest fund lands.

Victoria Sheksheyeva emphasized that the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office of the Attorney General will continue to carry out systematic measures to protect the Carpathian forests, which are protected by the state as a national treasure of the Ukrainian people.