LYMAN (Ukraine) – With practiced calm, a Ukrainian demining expert carefully pushed aside some stalks of dry grass, revealing a deadly surprise:
A hand grenade attached to a tripwirewaiting for someone to step on it carelessly.
The discovery, near the Ukrainian town of Lyman, was just one small event in a larger cat-and-mouse fight between mining and demining crews that is becoming a key element in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Mines, wires and booby traps are defensive tools used by the Russian military to inflict serious injury a infantry or immobilize armored vehicles.
Easy to place, bury in the ground or cover in rubble along a village road, they are devilishly hard to find.
Demining is expected to play a key role in Ukraine’s counter-offensive planned for this spring as Ukraine seeks to push back Russian forces and reverse the momentum of the war.
Your army will advance through dense networks of trenches, tank traps and minefields.
The Ukrainian territory is covered with thousands of Russian mines, electric wires and booby traps.
According to United Nations estimates, an area four times the size of Swiss it is not safe due to land mines.
They kill or maim hundreds of civilians every month.
In March, landmines killed 226 civilians and 724 others wounded.
Around 350 demining teams are working around the clock throughout Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has divided the mined areas into priority clearing areas.
It is promoting technological innovation for demining tools and aims to create a profit-making market for demining services.
He World Bank calculate that the demining of Ukraine will cost 37,000 million dollars.
Russia possesses a vast arsenal of land mines and its soldiers a rich repertoire of booby traps.
Russia It is one of the few countries, along with the United States, that has not ratified a treaty banning landmines in warfare.
Finding them has become an art well practiced by Ukrainian soldiers.
For example, dense tripwire areas often have a dead animal nearby, as animals trigger them when they wander through the woods.
Indeed, Ukrainian forces were alerted by a dead dog and goat to the presence of booby traps in a thicket of brush and dry grass near a former Russian post, the commander of a demining team sent to clear them said.
He asked to be identified only as Lieutenant Oleh, in accordance with Ukrainian military regulations.
“There were a lot of tricks here,” Oleh said of the minefield.
Soldiers probed the ground with fiberglass rods to prevent a metal tool from activating an electric mine meant to kill deminers.
The hand grenade attached to a detonating cable had been found earlier by his comrades, before the soldiers returned to detonate it safely, as it was too dangerous to defuse.
The team, which operates out of Lyman, liberated by Russian forces last fall, found a booby-trapped trick to fool demining teams, a common occurrence.
In this case, it was a Claymore mine – an explosive that shoots shrapnel at its targets – that had a tripwire.
The Russians had laid an electric cable nearby, implying that it could also be activated remotely by an observer.
But the wire ended up nearby, in the grass, without being connected to any detonator.
It was just a ploy to slow down the clearing work by forcing them to trace the cable.
The bush near the location on the outskirts of a city was also littered with bouncing mines, what American soldiers in World War II called Bouncing Betties.
When activated by a step or wire, they leap a few feet into the air and detonate in a shower of shrapnel.
“Those within a radius of 25 meters are guaranteed death,” Oleh says.
One such device, a Russian OMZ-52 jumping mine, had killed the dog and the goat.
Ukrainian demining teams face two distinct tasks.
Some clean up reclaimed areas to make them safe for returning civilians.
Another, more dangerous type of clearing is done by military engineers, who move at spearhead in assaults, walking ahead of stormtroopers to find routes through minefields.
The demining equipment and techniques have attracted less attention than sophisticated Western weapons such as Abrams tanks, although Ukrainian officials say much hinges on these operations.
The demining process can be done manually.
A demining expert from another small engineer platoon, Private Ivan, said he did so by stepping and stopping to look at the ground about a meter in front of him.
He then kneels, as the sunlight may reflect off a nearly invisible thread made of thin thread resembling fishing line when viewed from another angle.
Remaining calm is essential, he says, even as infantry commanders demand speed.
In an assault last fall, it exploded without issue four booby traps to clear the way for the attackers.
Specialized demining machinery can also get the job done.
The burly and heavy Soviet-era military vehicle nicknamed the Dragon in the Ukrainian military has flimsy armor and a single weapon:
a rocket dragging a string of explosives a few hundred yards ahead.
Explosives are placed on a minefield and then detonated to clear the path of infantry or tanks.
“You concentrate on your work without being distracted by the sounds” of artillery and small arms fire during the assault, Ivan said.
The unit, made up of about ten men, had dead or maimed soldiers from mines, but military regulations prohibit specifying the number.
The United States has been providing military aid in the form of a similar tracked vehicle system called Mine Clearing Line Charge, or MICLIC, seen as preparation for the spring offensive.
Both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries use anti-handling devices on anti-tank mines, which detonate explosives if someone moves the mine and are designed to kill demining teams.
The Russian military has planted a type of seismically activated landmine, called POM-3, which is set off by vibrations from footsteps before a demining expert can get close enough to defuse the device.
POM-3s, small green cylinders that can be spotted by an attentive soldier, must be destroyed by shooting them from a distance.
Exploding mines or booby traps on the spot is a common practice. It can be done by placing a small slab of explosive near the demining soldiers explode after along with the mine.
For the wire discovered at Lyman in the bush on a recent rainy morning, the soldiers opted for a simpler method.
They carefully rigged a long rope and grappling hook to catch the wire, then stepped back and pulled.
There was a bang.
Black smoke came out. A soldier nonchalantly wound up the rope and walked out of the thicket.
c.2023 The New York Times Society
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.