Ukraine War: How Landmines, Tripwires and Booby Traps Are a Deadly Danger for Years to Come | world News

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After years of bloody conflict, Ukraine’s scarred landscape is strewn with landmines, posing a deadly threat to civilians that will continue long after the war is over.

With over 40% of the country mined by one estimate, Ukraine is now believed to be the most mined country in the world.

Newly liberated cities could remain dangerous long after the last Russian forces were forced to withdraw, as Ukrainian defenders discovered trip wires and booby traps as well as anti-tank explosives ready to go off.

“The pollution is massive,” Katrina Templeton of MAG told Sky News.

“It’s not comparable, I say, to Syria or Afghanistan. It’s really huge.”

International law prohibits and restricts the use of various mines, especially those designed to target people.

Human Rights Watch has accused Russian forces of using banned antipersonnel mines in the eastern Kharkiv region.

A wide variety of mines have been deployed in Ukraine, including some never seen in combat before.

Ms Templeton continued: “You will see anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines, booby traps, you will see a lot of unexploded ordnance, you will see cluster munitions.

“All you can think of is seeing it in Ukraine.”

Image: Unexploded ordnance and landmines seen on the main road to Kherson in November 2022

Tremendous rise in mine-related casualties since the invasion in February 2022

Some of the landmines in Ukraine date back to before February 2022, with Russian-backed forces in Donetsk and Luhansk using various devices in 2014-2015 and sporadically in the following years, according to Human Rights Watch.

More recently, Russian forces have set victim-activated booby traps as they retreat from towns they occupied during the first weeks of the all-out invasion.

According to MAG, in the six years between 2014 and 2020 there were 1,190 mine-related casualties in Ukraine.

Between February 24, 2022, and January 10, 2023—less than one year ago—there were 611 known mine-related casualties.

After one incident, two Ukrainian amputated soldiers were fitted with modern bionic arms made in the UK.

In addition to directly causing injury and death, mines can make swaths of land inaccessible or more dangerous.

Agricultural production was reported to be affected by the use of landmines in fields, roads and rural roads.

Image: A mural in Markarev, Kyiv region, by artist Aleksey Postolga for MAG in an effort to raise awareness in a more optimistic way of the threats posed by mines. Pic: Mag

Post-war cleanup takes years

Ms Templeton says MAG is not focused on investigating which side is laying the mines, instead trying to ensure parties do not use banned anti-personnel mines and looking for opportunities to clear contaminated land so people can live safer lives.

The organization began its response by sending a team in April 2022 and began working with local partners.

Ukrainians will be trained on how to clean mined areas, under the supervision of experts from MAG.

But with the conflict going on for nearly a decade in some areas, it will be an arduous and deadly many-year process to cleanse every inch of Ukrainian soil.

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