There are an estimated 2 million land mines scattered across 40% of Ukrainian territory. Unexploded ordnance is another problem. DW's Rebecca Ritters visited Brovary, a town on the outskirts of Kyiv, where authorities are still working to clear the land.
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00:00It's painstaking and dangerous.
00:05More than two years after Russian soldiers were forced out of Kiev, deminers are still
00:10working to clear unexploded ordnance from areas on the city's outskirts.
00:14It's not only civilians who are at risk, but also the economy.
00:24Many areas of forest are dangerous because of mines or the aftermath of fighting.
00:34This hits the economy hard because whole hectares of land cannot be farmed.
00:42Experts from the HALO Trust, the world's biggest mine clearance organisation, estimate
00:46there are many millions of explosive items in Ukraine's soil, including more than two
00:51million landmines laid by Russia since the full-scale invasion.
00:56The scale of this problem is immense.
00:59It's not just here in Kiev, but right across the country there are hundreds of sites like
01:05this.
01:06Removing all the landmines and unexploded ordnance will take years, if not decades.
01:15To bolster capabilities, the HALO Trust has been taking on war veterans with extensive
01:19battlefield experience.
01:22Veterans like Ruslan Yakov, who served as a sapper clearing mines for the military until
01:26he stepped on one himself.
01:29We'd captured an enemy position and were ordered to clear it of explosives and hazardous
01:36items.
01:37While we were securing the area, we came under artillery fire and had to seek cover.
01:43Unfortunately, I stepped on a mine and was injured.
01:51Yakov hoped that when he recovered, he could go back to his battalion.
01:55But the challenges posed by his prosthesis made the rigours of the military too difficult
01:59and he was demobilised.
02:03The HALO Trust gives me the chance to keep on working for my country.
02:06That's really important.
02:09And contribute, they do.
02:11Using their knowledge of warfare, the vets analyse these high-resolution drone images.
02:16They identify with a skilled eye and determine where the other side might have placed explosives.
02:22We had a lot of expertise in flying drones, in analysing imagery and bringing data together.
02:28But we were sort of missing some domain knowledge about the local context in the battlefield
02:33and we're hoping that the veterans will help us understand a little bit better.
02:38It's a win-win, they tell me.
02:40In the industrial scale of landmine and explosive ordnance laying in Ukraine, the role of the
02:45war vets is invaluable.