MAKARIV, Ukraine (AP) — The truck driver had the radio on, his daughter’s full toy kept him company and bounced his heavy vehicle off one of Ukraine’s countless dirt roads that are major arteries in the country’s vast farmland.
The rear wheel then hit a Soviet-era TM-62 anti-tank mine. The explosion blew up the toy of Vadym Schvydchenko and her daughter out of the cabin. The truck and its sustenance caught fire.
Surprisingly, the 40-year-old escaped with minor injuries to his leg and head. Others were very lucky. Russia’s war in Ukraine is spreading a fatal mess of mines, bombs and other explosives. They kill civilians, destroy plantations, complicate the reconstruction of houses and villages, and will continue to claim lives and limbs long after the fighting ends.
Often, those suffering from the explosion are farmers and other rural staff who still have few options to use mined roads and plow minefields, in a country on which cereals and other crops that feed the world depend.
Schvydchenko said he would avoid dirt roads for the foreseeable future, as they are infrequently the only way to reach rural fields and settlements. Picking mushrooms in the forest has also lost its appeal to him.
“I’m afraid something like this may happen again,” he said.
Ukraine is now one of the countries with the most mines in Europe. The east of the country, contested with Russian-backed separatists since 2014, already infected through mines even before the Feb. 24 invasion, multiplied the scale and complexity of the risks there and elsewhere.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said last week that 115,000 square miles (the length of Arizona or Italy) of mines will need to be cleared. The ongoing fighting will only expand the area.
The remnants of the war “will remain a hidden risk for many years to come,” said Mairi Cunningham, who leads demining efforts in Ukraine for The Halo Trust, a demining NGO that secured a $4 million investment from the United States. He is in the U. S. in May for his work in the country.
There has not been a full government count of mine deaths since the invasion, however, every week the government has reported cases of civilians killed and injured. Cunningham said his organization had counted 52 civilians killed and 65 wounded since February and that “this is probably underreported. ” Most came here from anti-tank mines in agricultural areas, he said.
In a mobile app called “Demining Ukraine” that the government introduced last month, other people can send photos, videos and geolocation of the explosive elements they find, for later disposal. The app obtained more than 2000 data in its first week.
The trail where Schvydchenko was near death is still in use, it is now marked with bright red warning signs with a white skull and crossbones. the scars of the war from Russia’s failed attack on the capital in the first weeks of the war.
Even with the departure of Russian soldiers, danger lurks in the poppy meadows, fields and surrounding forests. The deminers discovered another explosive, unexploded ordnance rate a few meters from Schvydchenko’s exploding truck. On another open-air road, the nearby village of Andriivka, another 3 people were killed in March by a mine that destroyed their van, spitting out their shipment of food jars and rusty cans to the ground.
In a nearby field, a tractor motive force was injured in May by an anti-tank mine that hurled debris onto another mine, which also exploded. Halo Trust workers are now methodically scouring this site, where Russian troops have dug trenches, looking for any other devices.
Cunningham said the chaotic way the war spread over Kyiv makes mines difficult. Russian forces advanced towards the capital but were repulsed by the Ukrainian defenders.
“Often, the Russians who controlled an area, placed anti-vehicle mines nearby, some in and around their position, and then left,” he said. “It’s scattered. “
Mines are still laid on the battlefields, now concentrated in the east and south, where Russia has led its offensive since withdrawing from the severely bloodied scene of Kyiv and the north.
A Ukrainian unit that this week buried TM-62 mines on a forest trail in the eastern Donbass region in shovel-dug holes told The Associated Press that the purpose is to prevent Russian troops from advancing into their trenches.
The Russian traps have had no rhyme or transparent military reason, according to Ukrainian officials. In the cities around Kyiv, explosives experts have discovered gadgets in unpredictable locations.
When Tetiana Kutsenko, 71, returned to her home near Makariv, occupied by Russian troops, she found blood stains and an obvious bullet hole on the bathroom floor and wire traps in her garden.
The copper cord threads had been fixed in explosive detonators.
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