756 ‘hidden traps’ reveal the evil of Putin’s war in Ukraine

Deep inside UkraineHundreds of thousands – ‘if not millions’ – of landmines and unexploded weapons are hidden.

A third of the territory has been heavily contested since Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February 2022 and is now said to be littered with mines and cluster bombs, as well as trip wires, booby traps and grenades hidden in sinister places such as children’s toys and kitchens. kitchenware.

This level of infection – the highest in Europe since World War II – has delayed Kiev’s military counter-offensive and led to hundreds of deaths and injuries.

From February 26, 2022 to October 19, 2023, 756 such incidents were recorded across Ukraine and the annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Open source information analyzed by Metro.co.uk showed that most of the explosions took place in Donetsk. Kiev and Kharkov regions.

Two-thirds of the deaths and injuries were reported this year as Ukrainian soldiers entered Russian-occupied territory, where hidden mines remain a deadly challenge.

Last week, a toddler was injured after shrapnel pierced his chest and lungs during Russia’s shelling of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Three-year-old Miia Trishkina was rushed to a hospital in Kiev, where doctors removed a piece of a mine from her heart, saving her life.

Since the start of the war, Ukraine has been overtaken Afghanistan And Syria becoming the country with the most mines in the world, underscoring the ruthlessness and reach of the Russian military.

Anti-mining charity Halo Trust, which is responsible for clearing mines from war zones, stressed that the devices were “manufactured in industrial quantities and require industrial clearance techniques to remove them”.

Furthermore, a report by the World Bank and the Ukrainian government estimates that the cost of eliminating such threats will reach $38 billion.

Halo has recruited about a thousand volunteers to carry out the dangerous work across the country.

Among them are courageous people like Victoria Manco – a university student who trained as a pastry chef before the Russian invasion – who has no experience in demining.

The 19-year-old, whose father and brother serve at the front, said a forest around the village of Zolotynka in the Chernihiv region was littered with mines and grenades “attached to trip wires on trees.”

“The villages here were occupied by the Russians for eight weeks. When they were driven out, they left behind many signal mines, grenades tied to trip wires in trees, and anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Therefore, it is forbidden to walk in the forest, as there were at least six victims among the Ukrainian “soldiers”, she said.

“There’s shrapnel everywhere. “People used to use the forest to collect firewood and gather wild mushrooms and nuts, but now they no longer have access to it and it costs them a lot to buy firewood so they can heat their homes this winter.”

Victoria’s dream of becoming a famous pastry chef has changed since she joined the foundation.

She said that since volunteering with Halo, she realized that mine clearance was a “much more important task” for her at the moment.

“I was at school when the war broke out, preparing to study pastry at university,” she said.

“My whole family has been working in the restaurant industry for years and my big dream was to become a chef and open my own restaurant.”

“I’m only 19 and now I don’t have that dream anymore. The invasion changed that and everything else.”

“My father and brother both serve on the front lines of the Ukrainian army, so I worry about them every day.

“It’s hard to have realistic dreams for the future if you don’t know what will happen on any given day.”

Oksana Krasiuk, a former financial inspector, now works in the village of Chkalovske in the Kharkov region, where Russians used rocket launchers to spread hundreds of plastic mines.

The 37-year-old said explosions from these types of devices do not usually kill people – unless they are very young children – but they maim and injure feet and legs.

“There are more than ten single people living here on the football field, which used to be used by all the children in the village,” she added.

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