There were so many mines on Larisa Sysenko\u2019s small farm in Kamyanka in eastern Ukraine after the Russians withdrew that she and her husband Viktor began demining it themselves \u2014 with rakes.<\/p>\n
Along the front line at Korobchyne near Kharkiv, Mykola Pereverzev started clearing fields with his farm machinery.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy tractor was blown up three times. We had to get a new one. It was completely unrepairable. But we ended up clearing 200 hectares of minefields in two months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely everyone demines by themselves,\u201d declared Igor Kniazev, who farms half an hour from Larisa\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Ukraine is one of the world\u2019s renowned breadbaskets, its black earth so rich and fertile you want to scoop it up and inhale its aroma.<\/p>\n
But that dark soil is now almost certainly the most heavily mined on the planet, experts told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
More than three years of relentless artillery barrages \u2014\u00a0 the most intense since World War II \u2014 have scattered it with millions of tonnes of ordnance, much still unexploded.<\/p>\n
Experts estimate one in 10 shells fail to detonate, with up to a third of North Korean munitions fired by Russia remaining intact, their high explosives deteriorating where they fall.<\/p>\n
Yet the drones revolutionising warfare in Ukraine may also transform the demining process.<\/p>\n
Ukraine and many of the 80-plus nongovernmental organisations and commercial groups operating there already employ drones to accelerate the enormous task of land clearance, supported by substantial international funding.<\/p>\n
Despite the dangers and official warnings, farmers themselves often take the initiative, like the Sysenkos.<\/p>\n
They were among the first to return to devastated Kamyanka, which Russian forces occupied from March to September 2022.<\/p>\n
Two weeks after Ukrainian soldiers recaptured the village, Larisa and Viktor returned to find their house uninhabitable, without utilities.<\/p>\n
After waiting out the winter, they returned in March 2023 to take stock and begin cleanup, first removing the gallows Russian soldiers had erected in their yard.<\/p>\n
Then they started demining, with rakes. \u201cThere were many mines, and our guys in the Ukrainian army couldn\u2019t prioritise us. So we slowly demined ourselves with rakes,\u201d Larisa said cheerfully.<\/p>\n
Boxes of Russian artillery shells \u2014 152mm howitzer shells specifically, Viktor noted with a mischievous smile \u2014 still sit stacked before their house.<\/p>\n
\u201cI served in Soviet artillery, so I know something about them,\u201d the 56-year-old added.<\/p>\n
That summer, Swiss FSD Foundation deminers discovered 54 mines in the Sysenkos\u2019 field.<\/p>\n
The deminers instructed the Sysenkos \u201cto evacuate the house\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir protocols prohibited us from staying. So we complied. The demining machine traversed the area repeatedly, triggering numerous explosions.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Kamyanka remains largely a ghost village with gutted homes, about 40 people have returned \u2014 far below its pre-war population of 1,200.<\/p>\n
Many fear the mines, and several residents have stepped on them.<\/p>\n
Yet farmers cannot afford to wait and have resumed working the vast fields of Ukraine\u2019s renowned \u201cchernozem\u201d soil, famous for its intense blackness and fertility.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at surrounding villages, farmers have modified tractors themselves for clearance and are already planting wheat and sunflowers,\u201d Viktor added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were so many mines on Larisa Sysenko\u2019s small farm in Kamyanka in eastern Ukraine after the Russians…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[6178,299,16494,12,332,7661,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-234266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-gallery","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","14":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114788436753883938","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}