Deliberate Mining — Component of Ecocide in Ukraine

Having become one of the most contaminated countries in the world, Ukraine faces enormous challenges in clearing its territory from mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). The actual size of the territory, which requires clearing is still very difficult to access as fighting is still ongoing. Around 18% of Ukraine’s territory remains under occupation at the time of writing (April 2023). To date the Kharkiv and Kherson regions remain the most contaminated regions of all the liberated territories, as russian forces had been present there for a longer period of time.

Also, the nature of challenges in demining is different to the pre-Feb 2022 situation for the following reasons:

1. much heavier and longer fighting;
2. the range and dispersal of the explosive ordnance is much greater;
3. the size of potentially contaminated territories is 10 times larger.

The use of remote mining by the russian troops. Source: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, borrowed from [1].

Deliberate Mining

President Zelensky promised that the indiscriminate use of explosive ordnance will be among the charges put forward against russia in international tribunals. Even after they have been forced out of the areas they occupied, russians are infamously creative in laying booby-traps: they plant victimactivated devices on animals, dead-bodies, double and even triple mine-traps on the roads, fields and forests.

The use of improvised explosive devices and mine traps by the russian military. Source: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, borrowed from [1].

It has been observed that the russians have also deliberately targeted farming areas and agricultural land for contamination to render it impossible to use for economic activity. As a result of russia’s invasion, nearly five million hectares (50,000 square km) of agricultural land are currently unsuitable for use in Ukraine due to mines, contamination with explosive ordnance or armed hostilities. Some estimate that land area of grain crops could be reduced by 45% after two years of war.

Mines and other UXO [2] are intensely poisonous for the environment: they damage soil as fragmented explosives release heavy metals like chrome, zinc, iron, copper, mercury; later these enter groundwaters and contaminate the Dniester, Dnipro and Seversky Donets rivers, thus seriously affecting water safety. Animal-activated mines cause forest fires with massive migration of wild life a devasted biodiversity. Almost 44% of nature preservations and natural parks of Ukraine (around 900) are under occupation now or on the territory of active fighting. 30 000 sq.km of forestry has been affected by the war and will be subject to clearance inspection as well.

The requirements for clearance of anchored and floating sea mines in the Black Sea, as well as on the river banks of the Dnipro, Dniester and Seversky Donets rivers are yet to be assessed, but without such assessment and subsequent clearance, there will be no return to normal navigation and the safe use of harbors and commercial seaports will be very heavily circumscribed, if not impossible.

Reference

1. Walking on Fire: Demining in Ukraine. Iuliia Osmolovska, Director, GLOBSEC Kyiv Office, GLOBSEC 2023
2. Ammo Manual for Humanitarian Demining, GICHD, 2022. Web-republishing by National Ecological Centre of Ukraine https://protw.github.io/demining/

Ukrainian version

Навмисне мінування — складова екоциду в Україні