Kilometres of Ukraine's forests are contaminated with explosive ordnance: DRC helps make them safe
DRC demining team step by step clears the forest in Rozvazhiv village in Kyiv Oblast that was massively contaminated with explosive ordnance after an ammunition depot exploded in spring 2022. The clearance process is slow and hard due to the heavy vegetation.
Tadeush, 46, is the Team Leader of the clearance team. Every day he plans and manages the demining operations, so the team reach the goal to clear the site safely and efficiently.
“In the evening, I start planning, checking the equipment and cars. I also design the team activity plan for each day, who will prepare the ground and who will clear the land,” he explains.
When the team is in the field, Tadeush is there as well, coordinating the process and conducting quality control of the cleared areas every day. He also needs to proceed with georeferencing, in other words, mark via GPS the team's progress.
The demining worksite near Rozvazhiv village is challenging. It is a forest where a Russian ammunition store exploded last spring during the conflict. The forest now is littered with explosive ordnance. After Russian troops left Kyiv Oblast, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SES) made a quick check of this forest collecting some of the ammunition.
Since November 2022, the DRC demining team, supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the German Federal Foreign Office, has almost completed systematic surface search. After, DRC deminers will proceed with a sub-surface search, checking with other equipment to find any explosive ordnance in the ground. Every time they hear a signal that signifies possible explosive ordnance, they have to investigate it.
“Although it is time-consuming, it is necessary to stop and check every time because this is a battle area that is publicly accessible. The forestry harvests firewood here, and villagers also collect firewood or pick mushrooms. In addition, there is a road in the middle of the forest that leads to agricultural fields,” says Tadeush.
He has been working in DRC for almost five years and in 2022 relocated with his family from his hometown Sloviansk, which is now close to the frontline in eastern Ukraine, to Odesa in Ukraine’s South. Before February 24, his team cleared contaminated fields in Luhansk Oblast where he started working as a deminer.
“Before DRC I had a job at a tiles production plant in Sloviansk. It was a huge plant with Italian investments that produced tiles of high quality and sold them across Ukraine and abroad in Europe. As far as I know, last year it was under massive shelling, and it was heavily damaged,” says Tadeush.
“I started working as a deminer because it is a very important job. I wanted to clear my homeland. Today, I clear territories in Kyiv Oblast—it is not safe for us now to operate in Luhansk Oblast due to the frontline proximity.”
In the forest, in a row of three, there works a deminer Dmytro, 36, who joined DRC three months ago. He was employed at the same tiles production as Tadeush right until last year's conflict escalation. After three months of active battles, when the military outnumbered civilians on the streets in Sloviansk, he decided to relocate.
“Kramatorsk city, which is not far away from Sloviansk, is often shelled. I have an apartment with a view of the city, and when there is shelling from Kramatorsk side, my windows shake,” tells Dmytro.
In Rozvazhiv, he checks the area with a long yellow metal detector that looks like a stick and is used in surface search because it does not interfere with the signal and can be used next to other detectors. When a signal is found, deminers mark the finding or excavate it in case of sub-surface search.
Afterwards, they inform State Emergency Services (SES) of the findings and their specialists come to either destroy the explosive remnants of war on the spot or remove it from the site. Since DRC does not have the mandate to destroy ammunition in Ukraine, only the national authority is responsible for this.
In a few months of work, Dmytro has already found 120 mm shells in the forest. In total, the DRC team found 117 explosive ordnance items in this area. Most of them were fuses from artillery shells, or artillery shells themselves.
Viktoria, 42, works next to Dmytro—they joined DRC at the same time. She is one of three women in a team of 13. Viktoriia is from Kramatorsk and previously worked in a beauty salon. The war forced her to leave the city and she relocated north with her husband and son and decided to join the Humanitarian Mine Action sector.
“It's physically hard, but it's okay. I understand the value of this job. The task is not easy because the site is full of thickets. We currently conduct surface search, so we are still going over the top of the soil,” she says.
Victoria sometimes goes to Kramatorsk to visit her parents and hears regular explosions there. The frontline is close —it is only 35 kilometres between Kramatorsk and Bakhmut.
The team plan to clear the demining site of 46,600 square metres in Rozvazhiv by September 2023. However, the timeframe will depend on weather conditions as deminers do not work in rain due to safety reasons. World Wide Fund for Nature at the end of 2022 estimated about 200,000 square kilometres of forest areas in Ukraine is potentially contaminated with explosive ordnance.
DRC was the first international NGO that resumed its demining operations after February 24, 2022. With active clearance processes initially in Kyiv and Chernihiv Oblasts, clearing roads, agricultural land and forests, this year DRC has expanded its demining activities further east and in Ukraine’s South — in Mykolaiv and Kharkiv Oblasts.
Alongside demining, DRC conducts explosive ordnance risk education in Ukraine’s East, North and South to reduce the number of injuries and casualties caused by unsafe behaviour and provides support to survivors of explosive ordnance accidents
Tadeush, Dmytro, and Viktoria said they planned to continue working in Humanitarian Mine Action even after the active phase of the war ends. They all are certain—demining currently is a high priority for Ukraine.
“I like this job, even though sometimes the weather conditions are very difficult—working in full protective equipment, for example, in a field at +30 C is hard. But this is a very important job, we need to clear the land where we live to make it safe again,” Dmytro underlines.
