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Ukraine war
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Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 18. Photo: AP

Ukraine war: Clearing unexploded bombs will take years, ‘we will need help’, minister says

  • ‘A huge number of shells and mines … haven’t exploded. They remain under the rubble and pose a real threat,’ Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said
  • In addition, Ukrainian troops have planted landmines at bridges, airports and other key locations to prevent the Russians from using them
Ukraine war

Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky says it will take years to defuse the unexploded ordnance once the Russian invasion is over. He said the country will need help from other countries to carry out the massive undertaking after the war.

“A huge number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine, and a large part haven’t exploded. They remain under the rubble and pose a real threat,” Monastyrsky said in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. “It will take years, not months, to defuse them.”

In addition to the unexploded Russian ordnance, Ukrainian troops have planted landmines at bridges, airports and other key locations to prevent the Russians from using them.

Members of the demining department work in a residential area, in Kharkiv, Ukraine on March 9. Photo: Reuters

“We will not be able to remove the mines from all that territory, so I asked our international partners and colleagues from the European Union and the United States to prepare groups of experts to demine the areas of combat and facilities that came under shelling,” Monastyrsky said.

He noted that his ministry’s demining equipment was left in Mariupol, a besieged port city of 430,000 people that has been subjected to relentless shelling for much of the war. “We lost 200 pieces of equipment there,” he said.

One of the biggest challenges the Interior Ministry faces is fighting the fires caused by the relentless Russian shelling and air strikes. The country’s emergency service, which the ministry oversees, is facing desperate shortages of personnel and equipment, Monastyrsky said.

A firefighter was killed on Thursday during the Russian shelling of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, while working to extinguish a blaze at a market that was caused by a previous attack.

Monastyrsky added that the emergency service’s facilities in Kharkiv and Mariupol were completely destroyed in the Russian barrage. He stressed that Ukrainian emergency responders urgently need more specialised vehicles and protective equipment.

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“The coming days will exacerbate a humanitarian catastrophe in critical areas. I must say that casualties among civilians exceed our military losses by several times,” he said.

The interior ministry has been busy trying to counter groups of Russian saboteurs that inundated the country to target bridges, gas pipelines and other infrastructure facilities, Monastyrsky said, adding that dozens of such groups have operated in Ukraine.

“We realise that sabotage is a key tool in the war,” he said, adding that Ukrainian forces have managed to spot Russian saboteurs by tracking their Russian mobile phones. “We reacted immediately … by searching locations where these phones were detected and acted against those groups.”

02:30

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In occupied areas, Russian forces tried to scare Ukrainian police who remained there by visiting their homes and sometimes even planting explosives at their doors. “They are trying to pressure people in the occupied territories,” Monastyrsky said.

Massive protests that broke out in Berdyansk, Melitopol, Kherson and other occupied Ukrainian cities came as a surprise to the Russians, who expected to be welcomed by local native-Russian speakers, Monastyrsky said.

“They have faced civilians who speak Russian but stand for Ukraine. They realise now that they made a major mistake.”

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