Ukrainian farmers risk lives to clear mines with rakes and tractors

There were so many mines on Larisa Sysenko’s small farm in Kamyanka in eastern Ukraine after the Russians withdrew that she and her husband Viktor began demining it themselves — with rakes.

Along the front line at Korobchyne near Kharkiv, Mykola Pereverzev started clearing fields with his farm machinery.

“My tractor was blown up three times. We had to get a new one. It was completely unrepairable. But we ended up clearing 200 hectares of minefields in two months,” he said.

“Absolutely everyone demines by themselves,” declared Igor Kniazev, who farms half an hour from Larisa’s.

Ukraine is one of the world’s renowned breadbaskets, its black earth so rich and fertile you want to scoop it up and inhale its aroma.

But that dark soil is now almost certainly the most heavily mined on the planet, experts told the AFP news agency.

More than three years of relentless artillery barrages —  the most intense since World War II — have scattered it with millions of tonnes of ordnance, much still unexploded.

Experts estimate one in 10 shells fail to detonate, with up to a third of North Korean munitions fired by Russia remaining intact, their high explosives deteriorating where they fall.

Yet the drones revolutionising warfare in Ukraine may also transform the demining process.

Ukraine and many of the 80-plus nongovernmental organisations and commercial groups operating there already employ drones to accelerate the enormous task of land clearance, supported by substantial international funding.

Despite the dangers and official warnings, farmers themselves often take the initiative, like the Sysenkos.

They were among the first to return to devastated Kamyanka, which Russian forces occupied from March to September 2022.

Two weeks after Ukrainian soldiers recaptured the village, Larisa and Viktor returned to find their house uninhabitable, without utilities.

After waiting out the winter, they returned in March 2023 to take stock and begin cleanup, first removing the gallows Russian soldiers had erected in their yard.

Then they started demining, with rakes. “There were many mines, and our guys in the Ukrainian army couldn’t prioritise us. So we slowly demined ourselves with rakes,” Larisa said cheerfully.

Boxes of Russian artillery shells — 152mm howitzer shells specifically, Viktor noted with a mischievous smile — still sit stacked before their house.

“I served in Soviet artillery, so I know something about them,” the 56-year-old added.

That summer, Swiss FSD Foundation deminers discovered 54 mines in the Sysenkos’ field.

The deminers instructed the Sysenkos “to evacuate the house”.

“Their protocols prohibited us from staying. So we complied. The demining machine traversed the area repeatedly, triggering numerous explosions.”

While Kamyanka remains largely a ghost village with gutted homes, about 40 people have returned — far below its pre-war population of 1,200.

Many fear the mines, and several residents have stepped on them.

Yet farmers cannot afford to wait and have resumed working the vast fields of Ukraine’s renowned “chernozem” soil, famous for its intense blackness and fertility.

“Looking at surrounding villages, farmers have modified tractors themselves for clearance and are already planting wheat and sunflowers,” Viktor added.