The pine-beech forests which once surrounded Klessiw in northern Ukraine were fertile ground for the berries and mushrooms which sustained generations.

Now those forests and the rich farming lands which ran alongside them have been razed to the ground. In their place, there's a moonscape of pox scars in the earth itself.

Where once there were foragers and farmers, now there are miners. The prize they're after is amber — 10,000-year-old fossilised tree resin.

The forests outside Klessiw, in northern Ukraine, are under threat from destructive amber mining. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

A bag of raw amber seized by Ukraine's security services. Refined stones are used in jewellery. ( Supplied: Ukraine SBU Facebook )

It's being extracted by hand. Miners blast craters in the sandy soil and flood them with high-pressure water, freeing the amber to float to the surface.

It's hard work but it can be highly lucrative. Amber is a coveted gemstone with a massive global market.

It's one of Ukraine's few natural resources — the former Soviet state is estimated to hold the world's second-largest deposit of amber after Russia.

But rather than a driver of state royalties and local employment, the amber industry has become a sinkhole of graft and organised crime.

Waterlogged amber pits pock the landscape outside Klessiw where forests once stood. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

"Despite having such a rich natural resource, we're like beggars with hat in hand," said Hiluk Ivanovych, a member of Klessiw's regional council.

"But we are not poor, we are robbed. Our government is robbing us. We have corruption at the highest level."

Out of the chaos of revolution

The goldrush began after pro-European protestors brought down the government of Viktor Yanukovych, an administration with close ties to Moscow, in what became known as the Euromaidan Revolution.

More than 100 people died in Kiev during clashes between protestors and security forces until finally, Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014.

An interim government was put in place and elections were held. But the instability created a vacuum. Russia annexed Crimea; organised crime flourished.

Years of political upheaval in Ukraine have left the nation vulnerable to corruption and criminal exploitation. ( Reuters: Gleb Garanich )

Already vulnerable to corruption, Ukraine's institutions of state stumbled. Human trafficking and drug-running syndicates became emboldened, seizing profit-taking opportunities wherever they lay. In the north and the west of the country, there were few as lucrative as amber.

Several years ago, when prices per kilogram spiked to $US3,000 ($4,360), impoverished miners could radically transform their lives with a single lucky find. Large-scale mining offered multimillion-dollar windfalls.

But as the mining boom took hold, there were only two firms with official extraction licences. One small private outfit, the other a large state-owned corporation now called Ukrainian Amber. All other extraction constitutes a criminal offence.

While more than 300 tonnes of the ancient tree sap is pulled from the ground in Ukraine each year, the state company reported fewer than 720kg a year in 2016 and 2017. More than 90 per cent of Ukraine's amber is effectively stolen.

A half-billion-dollar black market

Much of the amber is smuggled out of the country, usually over the border into Poland, and then sold to wealthy buyers from the Middle East and China.

A man with a shovel scavenges for amber with a shovel where a large-scale mining operation once blasted the earth with high-pressure water. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

Amber is now traded on a black market valued at $US500 million a year. There are estimates Ukraine is losing as much as 1 million euros a day in foregone royalties. For Europe's poorest economy, which is locked into a conflict on its eastern border with Russia, this is money Kiev can't afford to lose.

Anti-corruption detective Olena Krolovetskaya said Kiev had vastly insufficient control over its mineral assets.

"The amber industry is the most corrupted industry in Ukraine," she said. "There is no regulation."

It is said there are just 500 jobs for the 10,000 residents of Klessiw, Ukraine. Many young people are leaving the town. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

In post-Communist Klessiw, there's little in the way of employment. A granite quarry still operates, selling crushed aggregate and sand. A long-abandoned mill rots on the riverbank.

There's just one supermarket, one motel and one nightclub. The national railway has a nearby workshop.

In the centre of town, a row of hawker stands sells knock-off shoes and clothes. Several stock waders and gumboots.

Oleksander Vasiliev was once an amber miner but now campaigns against Ukraine's criminal cartels. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

Hundreds of young people have fled the region. Some have travelled as far as Spain but most have gone to Russia and Poland in the hope of finding work.

"Even a few hundred jobs would change the situation here," said Oleksander Vasiliev.

"According to the statistics, there are about 500 jobs here for 10,000 people."

Vasiliev is a prominent voice for reform in Klessiw. For years, he illegally harvested amber, employing a local gang and investing in heavy machinery. He earned enough money to build a large brick home for his family. Now, he doesn't mine anymore and he's become an advocate for the legalisation of the industry.

"What I'm saying is that everything is as wrong as it could be," he said. "We reached the bottom. We are at the bottom now."

His path from outlaw to campaigner is a case study in the violence and depredation which has rendered the far reaches of northern Ukraine into a state of near lawlessness.

A hand grenade in the night

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 44 seconds 44 s Amber miners clash with law enforcement in Ukraine

After the revolution, criminal cartels grew in size and confidence, encroaching further and further into the rich amber fields which surround the town. They began to demand protection fees from local miners that ranged from $US300 to $US1,000 a day. At the end of a shift, work crews were often forced to hand over half of all the amber they had found.

"People do it because there are no other options," Vasiliev said. "They have families to feed."

Like thousands of others, Vasiliev had little choice but to go along with the demands for payment. But when his friend and neighbour Anatolii Kukharevich was shot by a semi-automatic weapon in May 2014, Vasiliev addressed a public meeting of the regional council and named those who had protected the amber cartels.

A week later, they came for him.

Bags of amber, guns and cash were confiscated by Ukraine's SBU security agency in September. ( Suppled: Ukraine's SUB Facebook )

"I think it was around one in the morning. They came on a motorbike. There were two of them."

Vasiliev and his wife were in their second-floor bedroom. The attackers threw a grenade into the open window but Vasiliev's wife had knotted their curtains, causing the bomb to get caught up in the fabric when it exploded.

"The debris stuck in the headboard ... the headboard saved us. It was a miracle that we survived."

He wasn't the only target. Grenades were hurled into the homes of others who were calling for the legalisation of the amber industry, including a regional governor. Some had their cars torched.

Once he recovered, Vasiliev called his friends. They spent the rest of that night guarding his house with automatic weapons. Calling the police wasn't a viable option.

Miners use engines like the one pictured here to operate the water pumps used in amber mining. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

It is said in Klessiw that even in the case of murder, uniformed police are reluctant to enter the town at night. Heavily armed cartels set up checkpoints on roads into amber fields, and they've been known to open fire on unfamiliar vehicles. With tens of thousands of illegal miners operating across the province, law enforcement is simply outgunned.

But where the authorities fear to tread, fed-up residents are continuing to fight for the right to earn a living.

"[When] ordinary people see gangs mining in some areas, they then make groups and go to other areas to mine themselves … because people don't want to pay the gangs," Vasiliev said.

It's only then that the police arrive and charge them with illegal mining.

Corrupt leaders cashing in

These confrontations have resulted in a series of violent clashes between local residents and the authorities. Police and prosecutors have launched large-scale operations. Hundreds have been arrested and charged.

But many of these operations serve only to consolidate the power of the cartels. In a televised speech in July 2015, former president Petro Poroshenko publicly declared that 90 per cent of Ukrainian amber was smuggled out of the country and he vowed a crackdown.

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"None of the sites work without the police, prosecutors or security service employees covering up for them," he said. "I am not going to take it."

A year later, an undercover investigation by Ukraine's security service, the SBU, led to the arrests of 32 people alleged to be running a large-scale amber mining operation. Among their ringleaders was a police chief, a lieutenant colonel of the SBU itself, Vadym Fedoruk, and the region's deputy prosecutor Andriy Borovyk.

Among dozens of bags of amber and large volumes of currency, investigators also confiscated Borovyk's collection of watches valued at $US100,000.

"Those top-level authorities who supervise illegal amber mining here, they are getting so much money that they don't have the time to count the banknotes. They have to weigh them."

Vasiliev is not exaggerating. After their arrests, Ukraine's then prosecutor-general Yuriy Lutsenko said the amber ring was generating an annual income "equal to the country's expenses on its military budget".

An 'environmental disaster'

The cost of the amber racket is tangible. The locals in Klessiw feel little trust in government and almost none in the police. They're afraid of being arrested and they're afraid of being shot. Many carry firearms.

But for the landscape of the Rivne province, the effects are potentially even more profound.

High-pressure water is used to blast through the sandy soil, floating amber to the surface. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

The cartels remain so influential, many believe they're operating in concert with other arms of the Ukrainian government.

"If they want to mine in some areas, so [the] state forestry [agency] will cut the area for them," Vasiliev said.

A discarded length of hose used in an illegal amber mine outside Klessiw. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

"They show them the area, and tell them to cut the forest, and they do it."

He told the ABC he was explaining this so that "you can understand their level [of influence]".

Even residential zones are not immune to the lure of the stones. In Klessiw, the scarred and pocked amber fields stretch right to the edge of private homes.

In a country with only 33,000 square kilometres of land protected from development, the pillaging of state forests represents a profound challenge.

In August, the head of the federal police, Sergei Knyazev, warned the destruction was so acute Ukraine faced the prospect of needing to declare the north of the country an "environmental disaster area".

He decried the "catastrophic consequences" of amber mining and cited the destruction of more than 6,200 hectares of forest and more than 1,000 hectares of agricultural land.

The scarred earth where green forests once stood. The trees are gone because of amber mining. ( ABC News: Matt Davis )

Corruption fighters are doing what they can to keep the crooks at bay. Stings variously pick off local government officials and occasionally federal legislators.

One official, Boryslav Rosenblat, was secretly taped taking tens of thousands of dollars to bribe other politicians, legal clerks and magistrates to get an overseas investor access to a fresh amber field.

The Kiev District Court is midway through hearing the case against Rosenblat. The detective behind his downfall, Olena Krolovetskaya, works for the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

The body was created after the Euromaidan Revolution, as pro-reform fervour swept the nation.

"That's why we have a lot of highly motivated people, and very young people," Krolovetskaya told the ABC.

"All our detectives want to live in a country that is fair and not corrupted."

She concedes, however, that "it is hard in Ukraine".

"But somehow, I think, no, we can do it. Because if not us, then who?"