Satellite Remotely Sensed Nighttime Lights Reveal Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Ukrainian-Russian Conflict

Since February 2022, the Ukrainian-Russian conflict has become a focal point of international attention. Because remotely sensed nighttime light technology can effectively track variations in light intensity across war zones based on light information, data can provide first-hand information on the war’s development to improve understanding of its status. This informs policy decisions and facilitates post-conflict reconstruction. Thus, it is necessary to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict using daily nighttime light data from the Black Marble product VNP46A2 of the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership-Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (SNPP-VIIRS). First, we developed a dataset of daily nighttime lights in Ukraine from February 24 to October 14, 2022. Then, statistical and spatiotemporal change analyses were used to detect spatiotemporal dynamics of nighttime lights in Ukraine from national, state, and city scales, respectively. The results show a significantly fluctuating decreasing trend of nighttime lights in Ukraine, indicating that the war greatly influenced socioeconomic development in the country. With the conversion of the core conflict locations in Ukraine, nighttime lights in Kharkov and Luhansk presented a significant decreasing trend. In some recovering states, nighttime lights remained low, indicating the challenges of socioeconomic recovery in the short term. This letter can provide an effective way for monitoring the trend of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict from a remotely sensed nighttime light perspective.

I. Introduction

On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin launched a special military operation against Ukraine. Ukraine enters a full-scale war with Russia as the Ukrainian-Russian conflict officially commences. Kyiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk states were the main battlegrounds at the beginning of the conflict, as Russia quickly captured several cities. Ukraine and Russia are the two countries directly involved in the most disastrous war in Europe since the end of World War II and after the beginning of the Crimean crisis in 2014. The war has profoundly influenced the direction of Ukraine and Russia and the world’s socioeconomic development [1].