OSCE: Eastern Ukrainians return home despite landmine danger

Although many accidents caused by landmines are registered, OSCE, SMM spokesperson Michael Bociurkiw on Oct. 15 stated that more eastern Ukrainians are returning to their communities in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.

Some 2 million people left the eastern region during the yearlong conflict between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government troops, as estimated by United Nations in April. Today, the sides reached a cease-fire but occasional clashes still take place, resulting in casualties among the military.

Despite this, and the hazard of the unexploded landmines, many Ukrainians choose to return to their abandoned homes in the area.

“The Special Monitoring Mission has been seeing more and more people returning to their homes and conflict-effected villages,” says Bociurkiw of OSCE.

He gave an example of Dokuchayevsk, now controlled by Donetsk People’s Republic, a separatist organization. The head of local administration, interviewed by OSCE, claims that the city returned to its pre-war population of 21,000 people, while in January only 13,000 were living there.

“But the rebuilding of homes remains a very big challenge,’’ says Bociurkiw.

According to a report by UNICEF back in April, the remnants of the landmines and unexploded ordnance had tremendous consequences for local citizens and especially children, who often find themselves attracted to the colorful bits and pieces. UNICEF praised the work of State Emergency Service of Ukraine, saying it was very efficient in clearing out the remnants in the Ukraine-controlled territories. But there is still a great risk for the returning families.

One of the landmine accidents took place on Aug. 8, when three boys aged eight, 12 and 13 years found a landmine in Donetsk, the region’s capital controlled by the separatists. The mine went off and the children were maimed.

The records of a hospital in Volnovakha, a city in Donetsk Oblast controlled by the Ukrainian government, list over one hundred incidents caused by landmines alone since February 2014. Bociurkiw fears that, with the cold weather coming, the soil will move and shift the landmines, so it will be harder to locate them and the danger to the civilians will be even higher.