Ukrainian sappers defuse over 3,000 explosive devices in one week

The State Special Transport Service of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported the information on Facebook.

The report says that during the week of October 30 to November 5, sapper units of the State Special Transport Service discovered, seized and defused 3,195 explosive items.

In particular, an area of 1537.61 hectares was cleared of mines and checked for explosives.

In total, since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the State Service of Ukraine for Emergency Situations has found and defused 81,151 explosive devices and cleared a total area of 34,837.01 hectares, including 700.1 km of roads, 2,240.4 km of railways, 319.9 km of power lines and 35 km of gas pipelines.

Mine-clearing efforts in Ukraine

In March, the UNDP said that the area of mined territory in Ukraine is 4.5 times the size of Switzerland.

In August, Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy said that they hoped to clear 80% of the land in 10 years and return it to use.

The same month, Ukraine's first domestically produced machine for preparing soil for mine-clearing received a certificate of conformity. This development allows for the effective neutralization of anti-personnel and detection of anti-tank mines.

On September 20, the Ministry of Economy reported that since the beginning of the year, over 200,000 hectares of agricultural land have been surveyed, identified for priority demining. 120,000 hectares are already being used by farmers.

On September 22, the Ukrainian Prime Minister announced that Ukraine would launch a market for humanitarian mine-clearing services through Prozorro, an electronic public procurement system.

In October, pyrotechnics inspected over 22,000 hectares of agricultural land. In total, 234,759 hectares of land have been inspected since the beginning of the year, of which almost 178,000 hectares have been returned to economic use. The Ministry of Economy called this a great result.