The Government is creating a humanitarian demining market and engaging private mine action operators to speed up this process. This was stated by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal during a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers on September 13.
“The financial support of our partners helps our Government to finance non-military expenditures, social programmes, and rapid recovery projects. One such project is the demining of our land. Thousands of sappers from the State Emergency Service and the State Special Transport Service are working every day to inspect and clear our land of mines. However, the scale of the work is so large that we need additional tools,” the Prime Minister said.
According to Denys Shmyhal, the Government is now paying a lot of attention to the demining of agricultural land. Agrarians working in the de-occupied territories are fully compensated for the costs of humanitarian demining. The state budget allocates UAH 3 billion for this programme.
“Since the beginning of the year, sappers have surveyed more than 200,000 hectares of fertile land, cleared it of mines and handed it over to farmers so they can sow and harvest again. Top 3 regions in demining since the beginning of the year: Kherson, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions,” the Head of Government noted.
The Prime Minister stressed that the most modern equipment, drones and robotic systems were used for demining. More and more new demining equipment is being produced by Ukrainian manufacturers.
“As part of the “Made in Ukraine” policy, the state will support such production. We will also increase the number of sappers. We are opening a special training centre for this purpose,” said Denys Shmyhal.
The Head of Government noted that there was still a lot of work to be done in this area, but “thanks to the support of foreign partners from around the world, we will clear Ukraine of russian mine debris”. (Government portal)