You're reading: Minefields Kill 261, Wound 479

STANYTSIA LUHANSKA, Ukraine – People living in the embattled Donbas face dangers from above and below: shells from the sky and mines on the ground.

At least 261 people have been killed by landmines in Russia’s war against Ukraine between June 2, 2014 and Dec. 28, 2015, according to estimates by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Another 479 have been wounded in the same period. The estimates include all victims, military and civilian, adult and children.

The casuality count is bound to go higher.

Eve if a cease-fire finally becomes reality in Russia’s nearly two-year war against Ukraine, it will take years to clean the fields and forests of mines and unexploded munitions there, experts say.

Landmines currently cause 80 percent of civilian casualties in Donbas, Ivan Šimonovic, the United Nations’ assistant secretary-general for human rights, said at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine in December, according to Ukrinform news agency. Even as far back as March 2015, UNICEF said the mine death toll since the war started include 42 children, but officials said they had no updated total on Jan. 21.

Kyiv Post+

Standing at a checkpoint in Stanytsia Luhanska, a government-controlled town just miles from the separatist stronghold of Luhansk and 850 kilometers east of Kyiv, Olga and her mother-in-law Mariya Petrivna say they would never stray from a clear path, because that could prove deadly.

293 mine accidents

In mid-October, two women were killed by landmines in this area when they tried to bypass a military checkpoint through a field. There are reports of soldiers or civilians being killed by landmines in Stanytsia Luhanska almost every month.

There were 293 mine-related accidents in Donbas in 2015, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. This number is almost equally divided between civilians and soldiers on both sides. Some 7 percent of those killed and wounded were children.

Zeljko Lezaja, a weapon contamination delegate at the International Committee of the Red Cross, told the Kyiv Post that months of war has turned the kilometers of frontline into a mine belt, while the areas where fighting has taken place are riddled with unexploded ammunition. The most mine-contaminated areas are now the ruined Donetsk airport and the zone that stretches from Mariupol along the Azov Sea and up to Stanitsa Luhanska and the Russian border, he said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross collected data on mine-related casualties in war-torn Donbas from various sources, including its own. Different kinds of mines accounted for the casualties, including cluster bombs, which are banned in many cou
The International Committee of the Red Cross collected data on mine-related casualties in war-torn Donbas from various sources, including its own. Different kinds of mines accounted for the casualties, including cluster bombs, which are banned in many countries because they are especially dangerous to civilians. Some cases occurred far away from the war zone as the soldiers sometimes take ammunition at home as presents.
 
Cease-fire dangers

The number of mine-related casualties usually increases in areas where a cease-fire takes place. “People start returning to the area, they try to start living normal lives. So they visit the areas where they haven’t been for a while, and that’s how accidents are happening,” Lezaja explained.

The checkpoints for crossing the separation line pose a special risk, as civilians often spend hours there, unaware that there are mines all over.

In July-December, the ICRC counted 15 incidents, including two fatalities, at the checkpoint of Berezove, between Ukrainian-controlled Volnovakha and Russian-occupied Olenivka. The casualties were mostly women who had walked into fields to go to the bathroom. To prevent such incidents, the International Red Cross installed 25 bio-toilets around the checkpoint and signs reading “beware of mines.”

Hotspot for mines

Stanytsia Luhanska, which is close to both the separatist-controlled zone and the Russian border, is another hotspot of mines.

A bumpy road that leads to a distant Ukrainian checkpoint near the town is the single safe route. But even the soldiers serving there don’t know exactly where all the mines are, since their predecessors didn’t give them maps showing where the mines were placed.

“In the first two weeks on arrival here we had about a dozen guys wounded by landmines,” said Oksana Chorna, a paramedic driver of the 28th infantry brigade serving in Stanytsia Luhanska.

Lezaja of International Red Cross said that this happens because the area switched hands several times, and none of the parties that controlled the area shared information with each other. “Mines don’t recognize cease-fires, they don’t recognize friends or enemies,” he said.

In late September 2014, the sides in the conflict agreed in the Minsk memorandum to stop mining Donbas and start demining. But they have both violated the deal.

New mines laid

“Mines are still being laid,” Alexander Hug, the deputy chief monitor of the special monitoring mission in Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told the Kyiv Post. He added that monitors had seen the mining of government-controlled Mariyinka and separatist-controlled Yasynuvata.

OSCE monitors also warn about many unexploded ordnances present in the villages of Shyrokine, Pisky and Spartak. “There can be explosions when you visit these places,” Hug said.

Demining has become one of the major topics of the recently intensified peace talks in Minsk.

Iryna Gerashchenko, a special representative of President Petro Poroshenko in the peace process, announced a major demining project in Donbas planned in the spring.

“We determined 12 primary demining areas in the conflict zones, and work has already started at four infrastructural objects,” Gerashchenko said in an interview with Ukrainian television’s 5th Channel.

nternational Committee of the Red Cross staff members install a land mine warning sign in the village of Berezove in Donetsk Oblast on Sept. 26.

International Committee of the Red Cross staff members install a land mine warning sign in the village of Berezove in Donetsk Oblast on Sept. 26.

 

Explosives destroyed

The Ukrainian military has officially reported that they have destroyed some 49,000 explosives since the war started. But in private conversations the soldiers confirmed to the Kyiv Post that they are still laying mines to defend their dugouts. They say they avoided mining residential areas, however.

Even so, if civilians decide to cut through the fields or woods it can prove fatal. Cattle, pets and wild animals also become victims of landmines.

The separatists sometimes hire civilians for demining.

Chorna of the 28th brigade recalled that her unit once detained a teenager who was crossing a field with a long stick. “Initially, he said he was gathering mushrooms. But what kind of mushrooms grow in a field? Later he confessed he was looking for mines. The separatists paid him some Hr 200 for detecting each one,” Chorna said.

The Russian-backed fighters also sometimes force their captives to do the demining, human rights activists reported in a survey published in November in Kyiv. The survey was based on interviews with 127 former captives.

The area of the separation line, also called “no man’s land,” often lacks warning signs about mines, as the state bodies can’t reach there. So international agencies like the Red Cross or OSCE have to mark those areas. They also teach civilians mine awareness and provide emergency workers with the necessary equipment.

Lezaja said officers of the state emergency services do a hard job with mine clearing, which is necessary to restore supplies of water, gas and electricity. But the absence of minefield maps makes their work more dangerous and means additional time and funds are required.

“It costs some $3 to produce a mine, but about $1,000 to clear one,” Lezaja said.

Even under shellfire, rescue workers clear Donbas of explosives

Oleg Bondar, head of the demining department at the State Emergency Service, points to the agency’s electronic Information Management System for Mine Action.

Oleg Bondar, head of the demining department at the State Emergency Service, points to the agency’s electronic Information Management System for Mine Action. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)

Ukraine’s emergency service agency has extensive experience clearing mines and unexploded ordnance from war-ravaged Donbas.

Even before the start of Russia’s covert war against Ukraine in the east, the deadly detritus of battles fought on the Ukrainian steppe during World War II would regularly be unearthed. In 2013, throughout Ukraine, 80,000 mines and unexploded shells were neutralized by bomb disposal squads. That same year in Donetsk Oblast alone 3,000 shells were found, while 2,000 were found in Luhansk Oblast.

Since then, the state sappers’ workload in the Donbas has increased six-fold.

During the first year of the war in 2014, the state emergency service defused about 31,000 mines in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts alone, Oleg Bondar, head of the demining department at the state emergency service told the Kyiv Post.

Bondar’s department, which includes some 500 sappers, has cleared a total of about 47,700 mines in the Donbas since the war started, over an area of 110 square kilometers of territory.

That’s just a fraction of the area now littered with dangerous unexploded ammunition and mines. “We estimate there are about 7,000 square kilometers that we are yet to demine,” Bondar said.

The sappers, who are civilians, mostly clear mines from residential areas, power lines, gas and water pipelines, and farmland. Working in the “gray zones” of no-man’s land between the two armies, they risk being fired on as they work. They also often have to deal with cluster bomblets – banned by international treaties – such as those that were fired on the cities of Mariupol and Kramatorsk in 2015 by Russian-backed fighters.

Injuries and deaths are common. Bondar recalled that in December 2014 the head of one sapper group was wounded by shelling while working in the village of Mariyinka in Donetsk Oblast. “However, he saved his team by giving them a timely order to retreat,” Bondar said.

About 20 rescue workers have been killed while at work in the Donbas since the war started.

Help is soon to come from abroad: a team of demining experts from the United Nations is to visit Ukraine on Jan. 23 to assess the situation in the Donbas, Ukraine’s permanent representative to the U.N. has reported.

Bondar said Ukraine’s State Emergency Service has enough skilled people for the work, but they would be happy to receive new vehicles from foreign donors. “We need more cars to carry the staff and to transport the explosives,” Bondar said. But he also added that his team lacks modern, remote control-operated sapper robots.

The emergency service is now piloting the Information Management System for Mine Action, a modern electronic system to aid mine clearing developed by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining. The IMSMA system is being implemented in Ukraine with the financial support of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The new system’s database now includes all mine-related data from six Ukrainian regions, including Donetsk and Luhansk. “We’ve been improving the system continuously over the last year,” said Anton Shevchenko, a project officer of the OSCE mission in Ukraine.

Bondar said IMSMA would make the work of the rescue workers easier. They are now in the process of entering handwritten data into the system’s database, which is managed in Kyiv.

“We hope this year this system will be completely implemented all over the country,” he said.

Types of mines commonly used in the conflict

Ukraine’s parliament ratified in 2005 the Ottawa Treaty, banning the use on its territory and production of anti-personnel mines. Nevertheless, these mines are widely used by both sides of the conflict.

Anti-personnel mines used in the Donbas war include:

• blast mines – triggered when the victim steps on them; leading to severe injuries, and usually the amputation of limbs; hard to detect.

• directional fragmentation mines – usually triggered with either a tripwire or command detonation; fatality distance reaches up to 100 meters.

• bouncing fragmentation mines – also called “bouncing betties,” usually fatal.

• hand grenades with trip-wire – ordinary hand grenades with trip wire attached to their safety pin; this is the most commonly used “mine” in this war.

Anti-vehicle mines are designed to damage or destroy tanks and armored fighting vehicles. The ICRC staff have recorded 56 cases of the use of anti-vehicle mines in eastern Ukraine.

Naval mines are explosive devices placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. These mines were laid in the Azov Sea near Mariupol in winter 2014.

Sources: ICRC, Ministry of Defense, media