- The Ukrainian military faces a dangerous challenge of landmines in its ongoing battle with Russia.
- According to The Washington Post, mines have destroyed an area roughly the size of Florida in Ukraine.
- Humanitarian clearance operations are complex, expensive and can take a long time to complete.
More than a year and a half after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, mines have become one of the most troubling problems for the Ukrainian counterattack.
The Russian military’s extensive mines in Ukraine have made Ukraine the most heavily mined country in the world today, with unexploded ordnance and artillery shells as well as landmines now infesting an area roughly the size of Ukraine’s Florida. According to the Washington Post.
Dramatic changes in Ukraine’s heartland not only threaten the country in the long term, but also continue to pose significant challenges for forces seeking a strategic advantage over Moscow, as landmines had earlier successes against Russian forces before they began to delay a Ukrainian counterattack.
Efforts to clear landmines, also known as unexploded ordnance, continue, but the full extent of the situation will remain unclear for some time as the conflict continues. But data already collected by the Ukrainian government and humanitarian demining groups suggests that this dire situation could last for generations.
Greg Crowther, program director Mining Advisory GroupA non-governmental organization that helps people affected by landmines told the Post that the mine situation in Ukraine was unlike anything seen in decades.
“The sheer volume of weapons in Ukraine is truly unprecedented in the last 30 years. Nothing can match it,” he told the newspaper.
GrobsekA recent report by a global think-tank found that about 30% of Ukraine’s territory, or more than 67,000 square miles, was under heavy fighting and needed a thorough cleanup operation. The report also detailed the length of time Russian forces spent making large swaths of Ukraine’s agricultural land difficult or virtually unusable to navigate.
“To date, Kharkov and Kherson provinces remain the most polluted of all liberated territories due to the long-term presence of Russian troops,” the report said. “The nature of the mine clearance challenge is different from what it was before February 2022. First, the fighting has become more intense and lasting longer. Second, much wider areas of explosives have been deployed and finally, the area of potentially contaminated areas has increased tenfold.”
“The Russian military is notoriously ingenious when it comes to laying mine traps. They not only install victim-activated devices on animals and carcasses, but also place double and even triple booby traps in roads, fields and forests,” the report continued. “Russians are also reported to have deliberately targeted agricultural and agricultural land for contamination in order to deny their use for future economic activity in Ukraine.”
Humanitarian clearance operations are complex, costly and can take a long time to complete. Such efforts have taken place around the capital Kiev and in parts of the country to the west of the front line.
But the amount of contaminated land in Ukraine is so huge that it could take nearly 500 demining teams and 757 years to complete the work, multiple experts told the Post.and the World Bank Estimate Demining could exceed $37 billion by 2033, he said.
Landmines also have a significant impact on deminers (highly trained individuals tasked with clearing unexploded ordnance), as they are subject to damage caused by mines and booby traps planted by the Russian military.
Vladislav Sokolov, a deminer with the Ukrainian Emergency Service, told the newspaper that another deminer lost his leg last year in the Donbass city of Kramatorsk.
Sokolov then detailed that he had seen the deminers while gathering with other weapons removal workers, and said his friend had to get a prosthetic leg and was “trying to learn to walk” again.