Photos: Ukrainian farmers risk lives to clear mines with rakes and tractors
Along the front line at Korobchyne near Kharkiv, Mykola Pereverzev started clearing fields with his farm machinery.
'My tractor was blown up three times. We had to get a new one. It was completely unrepairable. But we ended up clearing 200 hectares of minefields in two months,' he said.
'Absolutely everyone demines by themselves,' declared Igor Kniazev, who farms half an hour from Larisa's.
Ukraine is one of the world's renowned breadbaskets, its black earth so rich and fertile you want to scoop it up and inhale its aroma.
But that dark soil is now almost certainly the most heavily mined on the planet, experts told the AFP news agency.
More than three years of relentless artillery barrages — the most intense since World War II — have scattered it with millions of tonnes of ordnance, much still unexploded.
Experts estimate one in 10 shells fail to detonate, with up to a third of North Korean munitions fired by Russia remaining intact, their high explosives deteriorating where they fall.
Yet the drones revolutionising warfare in Ukraine may also transform the demining process.
Ukraine and many of the 80-plus nongovernmental organisations and commercial groups operating there already employ drones to accelerate the enormous task of land clearance, supported by substantial international funding.
Despite the dangers and official warnings, farmers themselves often take the initiative, like the Sysenkos.
They were among the first to return to devastated Kamyanka, which Russian forces occupied from March to September 2022.
Two weeks after Ukrainian soldiers recaptured the village, Larisa and Viktor returned to find their house uninhabitable, without utilities.
After waiting out the winter, they returned in March 2023 to take stock and begin cleanup, first removing the gallows Russian soldiers had erected in their yard.
Then they started demining, with rakes. 'There were many mines, and our guys in the Ukrainian army couldn't prioritise us. So we slowly demined ourselves with rakes,' Larisa said cheerfully.
Boxes of Russian artillery shells — 152mm howitzer shells specifically, Viktor noted with a mischievous smile — still sit stacked before their house.
'I served in Soviet artillery, so I know something about them,' the 56-year-old added.
That summer, Swiss FSD Foundation deminers discovered 54 mines in the Sysenkos' field.
The deminers instructed the Sysenkos 'to evacuate the house'.
'Their protocols prohibited us from staying. So we complied. The demining machine traversed the area repeatedly, triggering numerous explosions.'
While Kamyanka remains largely a ghost village with gutted homes, about 40 people have returned — far below its pre-war population of 1,200.
Many fear the mines, and several residents have stepped on them.
Yet farmers cannot afford to wait and have resumed working the vast fields of Ukraine's renowned 'chernozem' soil, famous for its intense blackness and fertility.
'Looking at surrounding villages, farmers have modified tractors themselves for clearance and are already planting wheat and sunflowers,' Viktor added.
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Al Jazeera
8 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Ukrainian farmers risk lives to clear mines with rakes and tractors
There were so many mines on Larisa Sysenko's small farm in Kamyanka in eastern Ukraine after the Russians withdrew that she and her husband Viktor began demining it themselves — with rakes. Along the front line at Korobchyne near Kharkiv, Mykola Pereverzev started clearing fields with his farm machinery. 'My tractor was blown up three times. We had to get a new one. It was completely unrepairable. But we ended up clearing 200 hectares of minefields in two months,' he said. 'Absolutely everyone demines by themselves,' declared Igor Kniazev, who farms half an hour from Larisa's. Ukraine is one of the world's renowned breadbaskets, its black earth so rich and fertile you want to scoop it up and inhale its aroma. But that dark soil is now almost certainly the most heavily mined on the planet, experts told the AFP news agency. More than three years of relentless artillery barrages — the most intense since World War II — have scattered it with millions of tonnes of ordnance, much still unexploded. Experts estimate one in 10 shells fail to detonate, with up to a third of North Korean munitions fired by Russia remaining intact, their high explosives deteriorating where they fall. Yet the drones revolutionising warfare in Ukraine may also transform the demining process. Ukraine and many of the 80-plus nongovernmental organisations and commercial groups operating there already employ drones to accelerate the enormous task of land clearance, supported by substantial international funding. Despite the dangers and official warnings, farmers themselves often take the initiative, like the Sysenkos. They were among the first to return to devastated Kamyanka, which Russian forces occupied from March to September 2022. Two weeks after Ukrainian soldiers recaptured the village, Larisa and Viktor returned to find their house uninhabitable, without utilities. After waiting out the winter, they returned in March 2023 to take stock and begin cleanup, first removing the gallows Russian soldiers had erected in their yard. Then they started demining, with rakes. 'There were many mines, and our guys in the Ukrainian army couldn't prioritise us. So we slowly demined ourselves with rakes,' Larisa said cheerfully. Boxes of Russian artillery shells — 152mm howitzer shells specifically, Viktor noted with a mischievous smile — still sit stacked before their house. 'I served in Soviet artillery, so I know something about them,' the 56-year-old added. That summer, Swiss FSD Foundation deminers discovered 54 mines in the Sysenkos' field. The deminers instructed the Sysenkos 'to evacuate the house'. 'Their protocols prohibited us from staying. So we complied. The demining machine traversed the area repeatedly, triggering numerous explosions.' While Kamyanka remains largely a ghost village with gutted homes, about 40 people have returned — far below its pre-war population of 1,200. Many fear the mines, and several residents have stepped on them. Yet farmers cannot afford to wait and have resumed working the vast fields of Ukraine's renowned 'chernozem' soil, famous for its intense blackness and fertility. 'Looking at surrounding villages, farmers have modified tractors themselves for clearance and are already planting wheat and sunflowers,' Viktor added.
Al Jazeera
11 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Russia says it controls Luhansk as US halts some weapons pledged to Ukraine
The Russian occupation governor of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region claimed it had been entirely conquered on Tuesday, making it the first of the four eastern Ukrainian regions Russia has annexed that it fully controls. 'Just a couple of days ago, I received a report that the territory of the Luhansk People's Republic has been 100 percent liberated,' Leonid Pasechnik told Russia's TV Channel One. Not everyone agreed. Russian military reporters said two villages remained free, and pointed out that Luhansk had been declared conquered once before, in 2022, before being partially reclaimed in a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September of that year. Undoubtedly, though, Russian forces have inched towards reconquering the entire territory in the intervening 33 months, and that constitutes a second milestone within the past month on Ukraine's eastern front. Russia's advance dealt another blow to Ukraine, more than three years after the full-scale invasion began. On the same day as Pasechnik's announcement, the United States said it would not be sending Kyiv some weapons that had been promised by the administration of Joe Biden, the former US president. 'This decision was made to put America's interests first following a review of our nation's military support and assistance to other countries across the globe,' said the White House. Russian troops reached the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region over the weekend of June 7-8, marking the first time in the war they had conquered the entire breadth of the Donetsk region at any point, even though about a third of it remains in Kyiv's hands. These milestones may be strategically meaningless, as they do not mark a breakthrough or a pace change in the Russian forces' crawling advance, but they demonstrate that Ukrainian forces are also unable to turn the tide. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed its forces had taken the villages of Zaporizhzhia, Perebudova, Shevchenko and Yalta in Donetsk on June 27, proceeding to Chervona Zirka the following day and Novoukrainka on Sunday. Through such small but constant conquests, Russia has given its offensive in Ukraine an inexorable feeling. The buffer bluff 'Naturally, the Russian armed forces are now tasked to continue operations to establish a buffer zone. According to experts, it should stretch at least 70 to 120 kilometres (40 to 75 miles) deep inside Ukraine,' Igor Korotchenko, the editor of National Defense magazine, told TASS. Such statements have come before from Russian officials and pro-Moscow pundits. Last March, when Russian forces recaptured Kursk, a Russian region Ukraine had counter-invaded, battalion deputy commander Oleg Ivanov told TASS it was now necessary to create a buffer zone 'no less than 20km [12 miles] wide, and preferably 30km [19 miles], extending deep into Ukrainian territory,' so that residents of Kursk would be safe from Ukrainian counterattack. In May, deputy chairman of Russia's National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that 'if military aid to the regime of bandits continues', referring to Kyiv, 'the buffer zone could look like this' – and he posted a map on his Telegram channel, showing almost all of Ukraine shaded. When Russian troops reached the Dnipropetrovsk border last month, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said they had begun new offensive operations in that region 'within the framework of the creation of a buffer zone'. Officially, the Kremlin has annexed only Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, but given that Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 20 revealed he still regarded all of Ukraine as Russian territory, many experts believe these buffer zones are little more than an excuse to continue capturing as much Ukrainian territory as possible. On June 27, Putin referred to his goals more cryptically, telling journalists at the Eurasian Economic Union summit in Minsk that 'we want to conclude the special military operation with the result that we need'. In May, he called for a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine on Ukrainian territory, leaving it to his lieutenants to define it. One general thought it should comprise six Ukrainian territories, and legislators in the Russian Duma backed him. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty banning antipersonnel landmines. The move would allow Ukraine to manufacture, stockpile and use such mines to defend itself. 'Antipersonnel mines … very often have no alternative as a tool for defence,' Zelenskyy said. Ukraine strikes back Ukraine continued to score tactical successes of its own inside Russia, using long-range weapons. On Friday and Saturday, June 27-28, Ukrainian drones struck the Kirovske airfield. The Ukrainian State Security Service (SBU) said it was behind the attack and claimed to have destroyed at least three attack helicopters. Also last week, Ukraine's General Staff said an aerial attack had destroyed at least four Sukhoi-34 fighters at Russia's Marinovka airbase. Russia uses the fighters to drop glide bombs on the Ukrainian front lines. Intelligence sources reported that Ukraine may have destroyed a Russian intelligence base in the Bryansk region on June 26. 'Russia is investing in its unmanned capabilities. Russia is planning to increase the number of drones used in strikes against our state,' Zelenskyy said on June 30. The previous day, Russia had conducted the largest unmanned air strike of the war so far, sending 447 drones and 90 missiles into Ukrainian cities. Ukraine's air force said it had shot down or electronically suppressed all but one of the drones and 38 missiles. The increase in scale and intensity of Russian unmanned air attacks this year, and particularly since bilateral talks between the warring sides resumed in May, have led Ukrainian military experts to conclude that Moscow is marking Ukrainian territory it intends to launch a ground war against. 'We are not talking about the front lines. We are talking actually about [rear] areas and even the residential areas of Ukraine, so not so-called red line cities or communities but actually yellow cities and communities, which means slightly farther from the red line zones,' Cambridge University Centre for Geopolitics expert Victoria Vdovychenko told Al Jazeera. When Zelenskyy spoke on Monday, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul visited Kyiv for the first time. Zelenskyy said most of the nine billion euros ($11bn) in military aid Germany has promised this year would go towards the 'strategic objective' of launching 'systematic production of air defence systems'. He had elaborated on what that meant last week, when he said he was 'scaling up Ukraine's potential, particularly regarding interceptors', the missiles used to target incoming missiles. 'The scale of our production and the pace of drone development must be fully aligned with the conditions of the war,' he said. Russian attacks have been increasing in scale, and Zelenskyy meant that Ukraine had to keep up in its defensive response. Regarding drones, he said on Monday, 'The priority is drones, interceptor drones and long-range strike drones.'
Al Jazeera
12 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,225
Here is how things stand on Thursday, July 3: Fighting A woman in her 70s was killed and two people were injured when debris from a destroyed Ukrainian drone fell on a residential building in Russia's southwestern region of Lipetsk, Regional Governor Igor Artamonov said on Thursday. Russia has made incursions near two towns, Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, that are crucial to army supply routes in eastern Ukraine, Viktor Trehubov, a spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of forces, told the Reuters news agency. Trehubov said Russian forces are carrying out 'constant attacks with the intent of breaking through' to the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Reuters. Russia's air defence systems destroyed 69 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia's state-owned RIA Novosti reported early on Thursday. Weapons Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had called in the acting US envoy to Kyiv, Keith Kellogg, to stress the importance of US military aid after the Pentagon decided to halt some shipments of critical weapons over concerns that stockpiles are running low. 'The Ukrainian side emphasised that any delay or procrastination in supporting Ukraine's defence capabilities will only encourage the aggressor to continue the war and terror, rather than seek peace,' the Foreign Ministry said. Deputy White House Press Secretary Anna Kelly said the halt to some shipments was made 'to put America's interests first' following a Department of Defense review of military support around the world. Politics, diplomacy and media Russia is using an online media outlet to sow discord in Germany as part of disinformation efforts being carried out alongside its war in Ukraine, the German Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Russia is using an online media outlet to sow discord in Germany as part of disinformation efforts being carried out alongside its war in Ukraine, the German Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. The outlet, Red, portrays itself as a 'revolutionary platform for independent journalists' but has 'close links' with the Russian state media outlet RT, a ministry spokesperson told reporters in Berlin. The European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, warned that Chinese businesses' support for Russia's war posed a threat to European security, the EU's diplomatic service said in a statement, following a meeting between Kallas and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Kallas urged China 'to immediately cease all material support that sustains Russia's military industrial complex' and support 'a full and unconditional ceasefire' and a 'just and lasting peace in Ukraine', the statement said.
