In an urgent appeal to allies, Oleksii Reznikov told the Guardian his soldiers were unearthing five mines for every square metre in places, laid by Russian troops to try to thwart Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
The number of sappers in the Ukrainian armed forces was nowhere near enough to get through the complex Russian defences on the vast 600-mile (1,000km) front, with mine clearing units targeted with heavy fire.
Defence ministry officials in Kyiv suggested there was an opportunity for countries such as Japan that do not want to provide lethal aid to offer support in the form of mine clearing equipment and training.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has complained that having to wait for western delivery of arms and delay the start of this year’s counteroffensive allowed Russia to lay millions of mines ahead of their positions.
At a meeting in July in Ramstein in Germany of the alliance of 54 countries supporting Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark agreed train and equip Ukrainian mine clearing units.
Pete Smith, the Ukraine programme manager of the mine-clearing NGO Halo, and formerly an officer in command of all of the British army’s explosive ordnance disposal assets, said the level of mine contamination was “unrecognisable in modern history”.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In an urgent appeal to allies, Oleksii Reznikov told the Guardian his soldiers were unearthing five mines for every square metre in places, laid by Russian troops to try to thwart Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
The number of sappers in the Ukrainian armed forces was nowhere near enough to get through the complex Russian defences on the vast 600-mile (1,000km) front, with mine clearing units targeted with heavy fire.
Defence ministry officials in Kyiv suggested there was an opportunity for countries such as Japan that do not want to provide lethal aid to offer support in the form of mine clearing equipment and training.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has complained that having to wait for western delivery of arms and delay the start of this year’s counteroffensive allowed Russia to lay millions of mines ahead of their positions.
At a meeting in July in Ramstein in Germany of the alliance of 54 countries supporting Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark agreed train and equip Ukrainian mine clearing units.
Pete Smith, the Ukraine programme manager of the mine-clearing NGO Halo, and formerly an officer in command of all of the British army’s explosive ordnance disposal assets, said the level of mine contamination was “unrecognisable in modern history”.
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