Even as shells fall, Ukraine’s deminers work to make the land safe

Body armor and a first aid kit are critical gear for Oleksandr Kozachenko as he finds and defuses unexploded ordnance in this recently liberated town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. But just as essential to survival in his high-risk job, he says, is his good luck charm: a tiny, fading-purple teddy bear given to him by his niece.

“I am alive, my limbs are in place – so yes, I feel lucky,” says Mr. Kozachenko with a broad smile that passes quickly. October took a heavy toll on Ukraine’s demining efforts and teams. He knows  of at least three deminers who have been killed and another two wounded while working in territory recently regained from Russian forces. Among the fatalities was a friend and colleague: Kurilov, or “Chili” for short.

“It’s the nature of the job,” Mr. Kozachenko says. “You can’t be safe.”

But making Lyman safe was the goal for Mr. Kozachenko and his 16 colleagues as they worked to clear the streets of explosives in late October, after the town had been liberated from Russian occupation. Lyman is but a small corner of what experts say will be an epic, decades-long task of clearing Ukraine of land mines and other unexploded war materiel.

For Ukraine’s deminers working all across the country, the task is a daunting one. A life-and-death job even when a war isn’t going on, demining demands not just technical skills and training, but intuition, focus, calm, and courage. And as Ukrainians drive back Russian forces and civilians try to rebuild shattered lives, the work that the deminers do is crucial to creating a safer future.

An urgent, painstakingly slow job

The territories of Ukraine where explosive ordnance have been reported encompass nearly 54,000 square miles – an area the size of the state of New York in the United States, or Greece in Europe. That means experts will need to survey these areas to assess the level of contamination – a painstakingly slow process even in peacetime. In the city of Kherson, liberated last Friday, such surveys have just begun, and almost 2,000 explosives have already been removed, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a televised address Saturday.

But in Lyman and its surrounding villages – once home to about 45,000 people before the area came under Russian control – people started to return once the area was liberated, primarily to repair battle-scarred roofs and windows before the season’s heavy rains give way to snow. 

The approach of winter, when clearance work becomes impossible, creates a sense of urgency among the deminers. They work from dawn to dusk, taking only short breaks, so that electricians can restore power to strategic locations in the city. Their eyes are quick to spot the silver shine of unexploded rifle grenades lurking in the grass. Booby traps and tripwire mines worry them the most; one such trap killed a whole sounder of wild boars running in the forest, providing a ghastly reminder of the danger.

“The area is very polluted by bombs, shrapnel, and rocket remains,” says Vitaliy Vorona, tasked with overseeing the work of the state emergency services in Lyman. He sleeps at the fire station that the deminers use as their base because the windows and door in his home are gone. Pro-Russian graffiti sprayed on walls and bus stops have been crossed out and replaced with a simple question: How could you?

“Fortunately rockets are landing less frequently now,” says Mr. Vorona, knocking on his wooden desk to ward off a change in fortune. “Unfortunately, I think it will take over a year to clear this whole area.”

“I never imagined I would do so much demining”

The demand for demining experts is so high that crash courses have been launched, teaching the appropriate skills in double-quick time. 

For most on the team in Lyman, demining is a job they took on many years before Russian troops invaded Ukraine last February. What began as a relatively low-risk but rewarding task became a high-risk endeavor demanding professionalism and patriotism. The teams working in Lyman are part of the Pyrotechnic Works and Humanitarian Demining Department of the government emergency services. Most are highly trained, seasoned veterans, with many years of experience under their belt. Their rotations last 50 days.

Mykhailo Marchuk, a native of Rivne in western Ukraine, has been demining since 2007. Back then, he was primarily tackling leftover mines from World War II. He says the most challenging part of his work now is demining unexploded cluster munitions, anti-tank mines, and small, scatterable anti-personnel minelets. “I never imagined I would do so much demining – that I would be working in an actual war,” he says.

“If the war ended we could do our jobs calmly and easily demine everything,” says his colleague Taras Depanov. “Now we clear an area but a few days later a rocket lands. Then the civilians think we did not do our job properly.”

The level of risk for deminers varies with the seasons and the distance from the front line. The further away you are, the more effective and consistent your work can be, explains Mr. Depanov, whose meticulous character is evident in his tidy gear harness. In the case of Lyman, the sound of artillery duels in the nearby village of Torske serves as a reminder of the war’s proximity. 

“You need to have willpower and a strong spirit as well as professional skills and knowledge to do this job,” says Mr. Depanov. “If we are in an anxious state of mind or have a bad feeling, our commanders tell us to stay home.”

The deminers say they are often flagged down by homeowners who want their advice on whether rocket fragments or artillery shells littering their rooftops and gardens pose a threat. Those living in areas that experienced intense fighting, like Lyman, are more sensitive to the risks. But lives are still lost; soldiers and civilians perish in explosions as they drive down roads once controlled by Russians; farmers are killed tilling land peppered with mines; walkers set off booby traps in the forest as they pick mushrooms.

“There are two aspects of vulnerability to this danger: physical and psychological” says Tymur Pistriuha, head of the Ukrainian Deminers Association, a nongovernmental organization. “The most vulnerable people from a mental point of view are children, who, because of their natural interest in the world, now have to live in fear and beware of danger at any time.”

Physically, the most vulnerable are men, he says, because they often ignore or underestimate the danger of touching or moving an undetonated shell. They include men who gather salable scrap metal in areas close to the front line.

“Mines are perfect soldiers”

Demining teams are also hard at work in a forest-fringed stretch of land that falls within the once bucolic, now highly traumatized district of Bucha, outside Kyiv, which Russian troops occupied and then abandoned soon after the war began. This was a front line then, and it is still littered with anti-tank mines. They need over 100 kgs (220 lbs) of pressure to be triggered, but become volatile over the years.

“Mines are perfect soldiers,” says Oleksandr Kotvytskyy, Kyiv regional supervisor for The Halo Trust, an international demining NGO working in several regions of Ukraine. “They can lie in wait for years and then strike.”

The Ukrainian deminers working under Mr. Kotvytskyy’s supervision do so at a steady pace, equipped with protective gear that includes face shields, modern metal detectors, and color-coded stakes to mark their findings. They work 25 meters (82 feet) apart to minimize casualties if something explodes.

The rusting carcass of a car that hit an anti-tank mine hints at danger, and illustrates the need for attention. “For small villages like this, roads are their lifeline to the world,” says Mr. Kotvytskyy.

He calculates that one year of war creates about 10 years of demining work. The organization has identified over 60 minefields in the broader Kyiv region. The need for personnel is high.

For now, committed recruits can be found. Among them is Anna Davydovska, who attended a month of intensive demining training in October 2021 and relocated once it became impossible to live in her native Donetsk region.

“The biggest priority is that we are doing something for our land,” she says, adding that she loves the chance to move about and breathe fresh air, even if her muscles are sore and her hands blistered at the end of the day. Her adult son followed her lead and became a deminer too.

“I know that my family and I are 100% useful to our country,” she says. “That’s the most important thing.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported the reporting of this article