Ukraine has created a new unit dedicated to demining the country

Ukraine has created a new demining corps whose troops will work to remove the tens of millions of mines from the formerly occupied territories. This is what we know about the program and why it matters. 

Head of the Main Department of Mine Action, Civil Defense, and Environmental Security of the Ministry of Defense Colonel Ruslan Berehulia announced the new demining corps at a recent press conference. 

“The Deminer Corps has actually been created. Today, units of the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine have joined it and will perform tasks in the liberated territories,” Colonel Berehulia said according to Ukrainska Pravda

Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces joined the new demining corps, which has built a force of one thousand mine-clearing teams that will include upwards of five thousand specialists according to Militaryni. 

The demining teams will comb through the affected areas of formerly occupied territory and clear those areas of mines. Teams that have already been formed are operating in several regions of eastern Ukraine.

Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Kharkiv Oblasts have demining crews working in heavily mined areas. However, these newly created units lack enough of the demining equipment and vehicles according to Colonel Berehulia. 

While Ukraine's new demining teams may not have the equipment and supplies they need to perform their mandate they will soon receive support from the country’s international partners, which will include the Mine Action Coalition. 

“We are working with our foreign partners who have joined the coalition for mine clearance. Thanks to our joint work, we should expect to receive financial and technical assistance in the near future,” Colonel Berehulia explained. 

Berehulia added that help from Ukraine’s international partners would help complete the units that make up the new demining corps, which will also provide rapid response mine clearance and humanitarian demining assistance. 

“It is worth noting that deminers are not sappers,” explained Militaryni in its report. “The deminer profession was created for humanitarian demining of war-affected areas when demining requires human resources.”

“People who become deminers only locate explosive objects but do not come into contact with them. Using special methods, they discover the munition, identify it, and then professional sappers take over,” Militaryni added. 

Deminers are also tasked with correctly marking areas that contain mines so sappers can take over the removal of the ordinance. It is a job that Ukraine will sorely require in the coming years as it tries to clear the country of the millions of mines. 

On April 4th, 2024, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko revealed while speaking in an interview that roughly 25% of Ukraine's territory had been contaminated with mines or other explosive ordinance. 

“The de-occupied regions are the most heavily mined. Actually, stabilization measures there begin with demining,” Klymenko said, adding that the first priority was to clear the de-occupied regions as quickly as possible. 

Klymenko explained that returning authorities to the de-occupied regions and restoring their enterprises, critical infrastructure, and agriculture was important but also said that the longer an area was occupied the more mines it contained. 

In June 2023, The Washington Post called Ukraine the most mined country in the world and reported it could take decades to make the country safe. 

More than 67,000 square miles or about 10,800 square km were thought to be mined. That is a land area larger than the state of Florida.