{"id":112245,"date":"2024-10-01T14:48:45","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T11:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theukrainians.org\/ti-khto-povertaiut-zemliu\/"},"modified":"2024-11-25T22:43:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T19:43:29","slug":"those-who-reclaim-the-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/those-who-reclaim-the-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Those Who Reclaim the Land"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When the war in Ukraine ends, the territories are de-occupied, cities are liberated, and borders are restored, the battles will leave a dangerous legacy\u2014mines. No country has ever faced such a large-scale mine problem. According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, over a quarter of Ukraine\u2019s territory remains mine-contaminated.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This material is part of the project \u201cThe Most Mine-Contaminated Country in the World,\u201d intended to show that behind the problem of mine-contaminated land, there are also tragic and heroic human stories.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the third spring of the major war in Kharkiv Oblast, and children play tag joyfully on a village street. They leap from one wooden box to another. The boxes are still marked \u201cCustomer: Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.\u201d Before they became part of a children\u2019s game, these boxes held BM-21 Grad shells that had bombarded the village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty-seven-year-old Oleksii Kostenko from Kharkiv resembles a kind Viking. One day, he accidentally witnessed this children\u2019s game and couldn\u2019t quite pinpoint what he felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to describe. Disgust is probably the closest word. It felt so unnatural and yet had become so normal for the children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Oleksii reflects on why he became a deminer, he returns to this memory, this image of something that shouldn\u2019t exist in a normal world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Ukraine, demining is coordinated by the national mine action center. State structures, such as the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and police bomb squads, work alongside non-governmental organizations. Forty-seven operators are now certified as mine action operators, with another fifty in line for certification, according to the Ministry of Economy. Still, it\u2019s not enough. As of September 2024, the State Emergency Service reported 139,000 square kilometers of mine-contaminated area\u2014roughly the size of Greece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There aren\u2019t enough deminers, and the mine-contaminated area only grows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Oleksii dreams of seeing the country cleared of mines within this generation. That\u2019s why he and others like him work every day, inch by inch, returning the land to the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balancing Family and Duty<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Oleksii Kostenko\u2019s work is painstaking. Some days, he clears just twelve square meters; on other days, only one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Kharkiv Oblast, Oleksii kneels in dry grass between a narrow river and a field of overripe watermelons. Ahead lies a patch of land marked with red and white stakes\u2014his section for today. He wears a blue vest from the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) and red gloves. He works methodically and without any hurry, following protocol: visual inspection, cutting grass, manual checks, and only then a metal detector sweep. Many times on a loop. This is manual demining\u2014slow, meticulous, reliable. His metal detector often beeps; the land is heavily contaminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere was fierce fighting here, everything imaginable flew. So we find everything from bullets to fragments of BM-27 Uragan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oleksiy has two higher degrees, he once worked as a teacher before opening his own auto repair shop in Kharkiv. After the full-scale invasion, he felt a need to be useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was high time for me to see that I wasn\u2019t in the right place and wasn\u2019t doing the right thing. Around that time, I saw an ad for deminers, and here I am, demining my land for myself and my loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FSD team clearing the village of Kamyanka near Izium has twelve members, almost all from eastern Ukraine\u2014Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk. Most owned businesses or held leadership positions before the major war. All are mature, ironic, and know exactly what they are doing here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty-year-oldOleksii Kryvosheya has a patch on his uniform that reads, \u201cDeminers Investigating. Last Season.\u201d Once, he enjoyed searching for coins with a metal detector in his spare time. Now, working with a metal detector is no hobby, especially when he finds several butterfly mines a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur schedule is ten workdays, followed by four days off. So we spend more time together than at home. Our team is somewhere between a military unit and a family. And our team leader, Halyna, is like a mother to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Safe Place for Her Granddaughter<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Halyna Burkina smiles beneath her visor. Energetic and speaking rapid, fluent Ukrainian better than others, she has survived two occupations and two dramatic evacuations\u2014from Debaltseve in 2015 and Svitlodarsk in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A petite, fit 55-year-old woman, she leads a team of twelve men. The Diia app lists her occupation as \u201cdemining sapper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the field, it doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re a man or a woman. Everyone gets equally dirty, everyone gets equally tired, and everyone must follow the same standards,\u201d Halyna says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Her team isn\u2019t weighed down by stereotypes that demining isn\u2019t for ladies. ToOleksii, Halyna is first and foremost a leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Russia where women are housebound or treated as servants, our women descended from the Amazons. In my Territorial Defense unit, over 10% of the fighters were women, so female deminers don\u2019t surprise me. Halyna is a leader: thorough but caring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oleksiy Kryvosheya reports the day\u2019s demining progress to Halyna, who asks about his scissors\u2019 condition, which are used to cut grass before demining. As a leader, she wants her team to have the best tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Around a third of all deminers in Ukraine are women, according to the Ministry of Economy, and their numbers are expected to grow as Western countries actively recruit Ukrainian women for training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe check every tiny inch. It\u2019s probably a motherly instinct\u2014to do everything possible to prevent casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halyna\u2019s three-year-old granddaughter now lives in western Ukraine. The deminer hopes that, one day, the east will be safe for her too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fields Behind Their Backs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Virtual reality goggles, joystick controllers, radios, and clear visors. The people operating aerial drones and ground robots look like characters from a cyberpunk novel. But this modern team is searching among flowered fields for primitive remnants that, by all international conventions, should have long been relegated to history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The HALO Trust, the largest international demining organization, works in Kharkiv Oblast, as do FSD teams. Grenades, anti-vehicle mines, tripwire booby traps, butterfly mines, shells, bullets, and shrapnel all lurk in the fields, flowers, and soil around a small, war-ravaged village in the Chuhuiv district. A total of 500,000 square meters of confirmed hazardous area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demining here is done in stages. After a complex non-technical survey, a yellow-and-black robot car mows vegetation and clears tripwires. It\u2019s remotely operated. Only after the robot\u2019s done does the team enter to clear the land by hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look around, on every one of these fields you see someone has been blown up by a mine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Danyil Aliiev removes his visor and sets down his metal detector for a short break. Before the war, he was a surveyor in Kramatorsk, a city surrounded by fields of sunflowers and wheat. Now he leads a demining team, and all he can see today is one demining site after another. There are currently twenty-four demining sites around the village, but one field has already been returned to the people and is now safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBehind me is a field the HALO Trust team has already cleared. Farmers have planted wheat there. It\u2019s once again land that produces a harvest, feeding families\u2014and that\u2019s a good feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danyil is 22, and among his team is 57-year-old Vitalii Yarovyi, who doubted he could qualify for such physically demanding and dangerous work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI already have two granddaughters, both eight years old. I wanted to be useful. My family and I collectively decided I should try. And, despite my age, I passed the training and am now working.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vitalii asks where he can see his photos in the deminer\u2019s protective vest. He wants to send them to his son, who is fighting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the east. His break ends, and he takes his metal detector and resumes scanning the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vitalii left Sievierodonetsk before 2024 with his family after Russian forces occupied it in early summer 2022. Before the invasion, he was an engineer. Now, he hopes to return to his city, when it\u2019s liberated, as a deminer who will reclaim his own land as safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translation \u2014 Iryna Chlapchii<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a7\u00a7\u00a7<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[The translation of this publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework \u201cEuropean Renaissance of Ukraine\u201d project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They are of different ages, careers, and life stories. Yet, they all share one thing: a mine detector in their hands and a desire to return safe land to the people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5239,"featured_media":110696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2238,2232],"tags":[2333,2334,2242,2235,2236,2233],"class_list":["post-112245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reportages-en","category-reporters-en","tag-rozminuvannia-en","tag-demining-2","tag-society","tag-suspil-stvo-en","tag-war","tag-vijna-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112247,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112245\/revisions\/112247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}