After nearly four years of Russia’s war in the Donbas, Ukraine is now among the countries in the world most threatened by landmines and unexploded ordnance.
And the situation is so dire that even if the war were to stop tomorrow, it would take up to 40 years to make the region safe again, according to the Defense Ministry’s top minesweeping officer, Colonel Maksym Komisarov.
Untold thousands of unexploded shells and landmines are still scattered over an area of 16,000 square kilometers on both sides of the 400-kilometer frontline, posing a dire threat to the local population, Komisarov said during a briefing at the Defense Ministry in Kyiv on April 2.
He added that according to the United Nations estimates, up to 2,558 civilians had been killed by shells and landmines between April 14, 2014 and Aug. 15, 2017 alone. Official Ukrainian figures also show that, as of late March 2018, at least 273 Ukrainian troops have been killed and over 1,000 wounded by landmines since 2014.
Landmine clearance since 2014 has become a never-ending process in the region, due to fresh landmines being laid and continued fighting, often with artillery. Ukraine’s Armed Forces and the country’s emergency services together have 50 minesweeping squads, or nearly 300 personnel, working in the combat zones on a permanent basis. In the past four years they have already cleared a total of 346,000 unexploded shells all along the frontline.
“Can you believe that figure?” Komisarov said. “Each and every one of those dangerous explosive objects could pose a threat to at least 10 people.”
The officer told the Kyiv Post that the hazardous zone stretched up to 15-20 kilometers from the battle lines, given the range of the weapons used by both sides in the war.
And even though the Ukrainian military invests heavily in mine clearance in the territories it controls, there can be no absolute certainty that already cleared zones are safe for local civilians – unless the cross-frontline clashes stop completely.
“After fresh fighting, clean zones become fouled with unexploded ordnance all over again,” Colonel Komisarov told. “So we repeatedly have to go back to the same location several times.”
Russian traces
Meanwhile, the explosives contamination of Donbas continuously worsens, as Russia provides its proxy forces mainly with old Soviet-produced munitions from storage, which are often defective.
Ukrainian sappers discover plenty of evidence that Russia still supplies arms to its proxy forces as they defused explosives in combat zones, Komisarov said.
For instance, when Ukrainian forces liberated the two partially occupied Donbas villages of Travneve and Gladosove in Donetsk Oblast in late November 2017, they found Soviet-made PMN-2 landmines in an area previously controlled by Russian-led forces. As Komisarov said, Ukraine had eliminated all such landmines from its arsenals long before the war, so they could only have come from Russia.
Ukrainian minesweepers also found ML-8 landmines, which have never been used by Ukraine’s military.
“Or we find TM-62 anti-tank mines, which are used (by both sides)” the officer said. “However, very often we find mines with stamps showing that they were produced after (the fall of the Soviet Union in) 1991.”
“They a priori could not have come from this country.”
In the meantime, despite the ongoing war in Donbas, Ukraine remains committed to its international obligations regarding the prohibition of use, proliferation, and production of anti-personnel landmines under the Ottawa Treaty of 1997, according to the military.
As part of the agreement, Ukraine has already disposed as many as 2 million landmines, Colonel Komisarov said.
Dire aftermath
Given the immense amount of arms sent into the Donbas by Russia, and still frequent exchanges of shelling, eliminating the explosives threat will take decades.
According to United Nations estimates, a year of hostilities normally entails an average of at least 10 years of mine clearing on former battlefields in an affected region.
Thus, there will be enough work for Ukrainian mine clearing teams for some 40 years in the future. However, the work could go faster if the country mobilizes all of its capabilities, Colonel Komissarov said.
Ukraine may also get outside help.
A number of non-governmental organizations, such as the U.K.-based HALO Trust, the Danish Demining Group, and the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action are also involved in the mine clearance in the Donbas. In 2017 alone, they cleared 47 combat hotspots, removing 528 dangerously explosive objects.
However, according to Colonel Komisarov, even when total mine clearance is achieved in the whole region, rusty old explosives from the past will occasionally be found for many decades ahead.
“Even today, we still find World War I and World War II shells,” the officer said. “Physical laws are merciless and unforgiving in this сontext. Under pressure from the ground and water, old explosives are forced up to the earth’s surface eventually.”
“This sorrowful legacy of war is very hard to eradicate.”
