‘Will I live to see my farmland cleared?’ The pain of farmers and their mined fields

What is the current pace of demining, and what are the chances that farmland will be cleared soon? How often do farmers lose patience and fall victim to mines? And what is the state offering? Read more in the hromadske article.

Thousands of mines in the fields

“What should a person who finds himself in the middle of a minefield and sees a warning sign on the back of it do?”

"Call the funeral home," Anatoliy Dmytrovych answers, laughing.

Together with several farmers, he is attending a mine safety training organized by the International Center for Humanitarian Demining in Verbivka.

“In fact, you have to stop and call 101. Of course, they won't be happy, but they will come to save you," says Valeriy Tishchenko, head of the public awareness team at The HALO Trust.

"Yeah, in two days," Anatoliy adds.

Everyone laughs. As the saying goes, it’s funny and tragic at the same time.

In Kharkiv Oblast, stories of farmers or their workers being blown up in the fields are not uncommon. Most of the time, those who have to pay rent for the land do not wait for official demining and go out into the fields at their own risk. If more than a hundred hectares are in question, the cost of delay reaches hundreds of thousands of hryvnias.

The deminers admit that they often dismiss such remarks. But they still have to inform people about the tragic consequences: 128 farmers have been killed in Ukraine in two and a half years.

"Overgrown fields are one hundred percent dangerous territory. There is no need to think: ‘I'm lucky, I'll be able to clean it up’. No way. If the State Emergency Service and local authorities do not give permission, we are waiting for demining. Yes, I understand: it's long and hard. But it's better to save our lives and wait for these fields to be cleared of mines," says Valeriy Tishchenko, showing local farmers different types of mines on slides.

There are invisible anti-personnel mines completely buried in the ground – often the so-called "frogs" that are installed on tripwires; larger anti-vehicle mines; and very small "petals".

You've heard the term "minefield." Because no one will ever lay mines alone. In minefields, the number of mines reaches thousands.Valeriy Tishchenko, head of the Public Information Department at The HALO Trust

"Have you heard about Hrakove?" Valeriy asks the villagers, "There is a line of anti-vehicle mines there that reaches 500-600 pieces. They were planted in a straight line."

"Local farmers would find them in the field, pick them up by the body and carry them away: there was no obvious fuze. But, firstly, the entire body is the fuze. Secondly, this mine is equipped with a self-destruct element, and an explosion can occur at any time.

There is no countdown, as in the movies – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – an explosion has occurred. I'd also like to dispel the myth that the weight of an anti-vehicle mine is 120 kg or more and it does not pose a danger to people. In fact, a weight of 50, 25, and sometimes even 10 kg will be enough. Because these are old Soviet mines," he explains.

hromadske visited Hrakove, one of the most destroyed and mined villages in Kharkiv Oblast, in the spring. Then we saw how painstaking and long the manual process of humanitarian demining is: it takes years to clear a few areas (which is a tenth of what is needed).

Humanitarian demining (i.e., the gradual clearance of large areas of territory, such as fields) is actually being carried out by international non-profit and some domestic commercial organizations. State forces are not involved: sappers of the State Emergency Service, the Armed Forces or the National Police are primarily engaged in military and operational, i.e. urgent, demining.

After tripping a mine, he decided to wait for demining

Ivan Altovskyi is a farmer from Petrivske, a village in the Izyum district. It was under occupation for a few days, but that was enough: the shattered houses, village council buildings, schools, and a cultural center speak for themselves.

Closer to the fields, Ivan drives his pickup truck on dirt roads, with his own metal detector in the car. The farmer is driving around his land holdings, which total 200 hectares.

Now the roads are cleared of mines. In March 2022, Ivan was hit by an anti-tank mine on one of them.

"We wanted to go outside the village, so to speak, to reconnoiter the situation and look at the areas with winter wheat. Nothing foreshadowed trouble, because we had already been there before, and before that, the mines had been removed by military sappers. The explosion scattered the tractor, roughly speaking, so that only two rear wheels remained intact. And the blast wave uncovered another mine nearby, one and a half meters away," Altovskyi recalls.

He and his fellow villager were lucky to remain unharmed. Six months later, while inspecting the territory on the other side of the village, a car carrying military personnel hit a mine. His cousin and son were killed.

Now Ivan brings us to a field near the forest, where a large, grass-covered crater is visible. Its perimeter is clearly marked by scorched earth. This is where mines were defused.

These access roads adjacent to the forest belt were cleared by deminers from the international organization The HALO Trust. In May, they officially returned almost 12 hectares of cleared land to the community for use for the first time since the beginning of the invasion. They found a dozen anti-vehicle mines: the density is relatively low, as the area was mined by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to prevent a counteroffensive by the enemy.

"That's why we were lucky. Because we knew that it was our side that mined the area, and there were only anti-vehicle mines," says Ivan.

Now all the machinery is in the fields: the sowing season is underway. Winter wheat is being sown, sunflowers are being harvested, and the land is being plowed for next year. They work as a "family contract": with their son and two sons-in-law.

Although this season was unsuccessful because of the drought, Altovskyi says. The harvest of wheat and corn did not even cover expenses. And taxes have to be paid: over 200,000 hryvnias ($4,865) for the year.

Mine clearance rate - 1.5%

According to the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration in response to a request from hromadske, more than half a million hectares of agricultural land in the region are currently contaminated. This is a third of the total area of arable land in the region.

As of October, only about 8,500 hectares have been cleared of mines. To realize the scale, there are still more than 565,000 hectares to be cleared. That is, only 1.5% of the total amount has actually been cleared. This data can be extrapolated to the national scale.

Everything rests on the lack of resources and people. The state's priority is still operational demining.

The most optimal estimate is that in order to demine the entire de-occupied territory in 10 years, 120,000 sappers and more than 500 mechanized demining vehicles need to work daily. This is a very big problem. Unfortunately, the forces and means that we have now in Kharkiv Oblast are not only insufficient, but they are actually the least we can do..Ivan Sokol, Head of the Civil Protection Department of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration

So far, less than three dozen special vehicles and 115 demining teams have been deployed in the region. This includes more than 500 sappers from the State Emergency Service, the Armed Forces, the State Transport Service, and the National Police. A dozen certified non-governmental mine action operators are also involved.

"The priority in demining is to restore life in the settlements. Now, for example, 4,000 out of 12,000 kilometers of power lines have been cleared. A great deal of work has been done. But there are so many requests that it is impossible to work on them with the forces we have now.

We will get to the demining of agricultural land. But I want farmers to understand that if a settlement is de-energized, the priority will be to provide people with electricity," Ivan Sokol, head of the civil protection department of the Kharkiv Oblast State Administration, told hromadske.

According to him, only the recently launched Center for Coordination of Mine Action in the region should speed up the processes and improve coordination. So far, applications are being accepted there in a test mode.

The regional authorities call the problem with demining of agricultural land critical, but they urge not to carry out demining on their own and not to turn to the so-called “black sappers”.

Full compensation

Today, Ukraine has the opportunity to apply for a recently launched government program, under which the state compensates farmers for 100% of the cost of demining. 3 billion hryvnias ($73 million) has been allocated in the state budget for this purpose. Previously, there was a program to compensate 80% of the cost.

The government states that farmers now have all the conditions to start demining their land. To do this, they are engaging officially registered mine action operators, of which there are more than 50 in Ukraine.

Farmers in the de-occupied territories where mine contamination has been confirmed after a non-technical survey can participate in the compensation program. However, their plots must be located outside the 20-kilometer zone from the contact line.

Applications are submitted through the State Agrarian Register and verified by the Humanitarian Demining Center. It also announces auctions in the ProZorro system. After the winning operator and the final cost of demining are determined, 100% of the amount is transferred to a special account opened by the farmer in one of the state banks.

As of now, the government says, there are almost 150 applications for demining about 4,000 sites. And there are already examples of the first signed contracts. For example, one of the operators will demine 86 hectares for a farmer in Mykolaiv Oblast. The state will compensate for the cost of demining in the amount of almost 5 million hryvnias ($121,621).

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We ask Anatoliy if he is aware of the new state compensation program.

"No, I haven't heard anything,” he says. But he thanks us for telling him about it. Now he will ask his son to find out about it. And perhaps he will have a chance to live to see his 25 hectares demined.