‘The Russians mined everything’: why making Kherson safe could take years

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As many in Ukraine woke up on Sunday after a day of celebrating Russia’s retreat from Kherson, a team of 10 railway workers arrived at the small village of Posad-Pokrovske, for months one of the fiercest frontlines of the conflict. Their task was to repair the tracks to Mykolaiv. The route was blocked by tree branches and logs strewn across the road, placed there, they discovered later, by Ukrainian soldiers to signal hidden explosives ahead. They cleared the barricade and had driven less than 100 metres when they hit an anti-tank mine. One worker lost his legs and the others were taken to hospital.

It was not an isolated incident. Just a few days before a family of four drove over a mine in liberated Novoraisk, injuring an 11-year-old child.

Before the Russians withdrew, Ukrainian authorities had warned that Moscow was trying to turn Kherson into a “city of death”, but now it appears Russian soldiers turned the entire region into a minefield – potentially making it the most mined area in Ukraine and perhaps in the world.

“Since the Russian troops had planned the retreat, they had more time for mining and a good supplying chain to put all the explosive devices,” Tymur Pistriuha, the head of the Ukrainian Deminers Association NGO told the Guardian. “We can’t make forecasts yet, as the clearing procedure has only started, but potentially the region of Kherson could be most mined region in the country and unfortunately Ukraine could soon rank first in the world for number of casualties caused by mines.”

The roads leading to Kherson, covered with the debris of war, are lined with long, red cordons and signs indicating the presence of minefields every 10 metres.

Dozens of recovered mines stand in heaps, a few metres from the nearby checkpoints that now are under the control of Ukrainian forces. Meanwhile, in the country lanes, some unexploded devices stick out from the ground – waiting to be defused.

The work to demine the region could take months if not years. Witnesses and military officers have told the Guardian that the Russians have left mines and tripwires everywhere.

“The Russians mined everything they could,” said Oleksandr Valeriiovych, a soldier based in Posad-Pokrovske who is helping to clean up the area retaken from the Russians. “Roads, lands, bridges, houses, buildings. Everything. We find mines all the time. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during his first address after the liberation, urged Kherson residents “to be careful and not try to independently check any buildings and objects left by the occupiers”.

Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion earlier this year, deminers were facing a years-long effort to clear mines from Ukraine’s east. The country was ranked fifth in the world for civilian casualties caused by mines and in the top three for anti-vehicle mine incidents.

With heavy fighting continuing in the south and east of the country, deminers are seeing more and different kinds of devices deployed by Russian forces, including butterfly mines, dubbed “petals” by the Ukrainians: small plastic anti-personnel mines that have become notorious around the globe for their ability to inflict casualties long after wars have ended.

These PFM-1 mines look like toys and so are particularly dangerous for children. They are internationally outlawed but, according to Ukrainian officials, Russia is using them in its war in Ukraine, with several devices found in various conflict-ravaged regions.

But the problem with mines in Ukraine is not limited to the land. The waters of the Black Sea are also infested with hundreds of mines dropped by the Russians and the Ukrainians, with Kyiv and Moscow blaming each other. The extent of the mining operations remains unknown. Their presence is also posing a serious threat to other countries that border the Black Sea. Bulgarian officials warned citizens living near the coast to watch out for mines, while Romania is working to defuse devices found in its waters. At least two mines seem to have drifted to the Turkish coast since the beginning of the invasion.

Local demining experts are warning that even if the war were to end tomorrow, it will take at least a decade to clear the threat.