EU Launches Humanitarian Demining Initiative in Ukraine

The European Union has launched a new humanitarian demining programme in Ukraine, providing funding of 2m euros.

This was announced by the press service of the EU Delegation to Ukraine.

The Director of FPI, Peter M. Wagner, said: «We are pleased to be able to fund this initiative as part of the EU’s support to improve and scale-up humanitarian mine action in Ukraine. We believe that this innovative project can significantly speed up the clearance of contaminated land and its release for civilian use.»

The project, which is supported by the European Commission's Foreign Policy Instruments Service (FPI), is aimed at cleaning up areas affected by mines and unexploded ordnance.

As part of the initiative, 16 Belgian Malinois sheepdogs will be sent to Ukraine together with eight Ukrainian handlers. All have undergone an intensive five-month training programme in Cambodia. The teams will demine liberated areas, including the Mykolaiv, Kherson and Kharkiv regions, which have been heavily damaged by the war.

Most of the mentors were previously trained at the Sumy National Agrarian University of Ukraine, where they not only learnt training skills but also took manual demining courses.

The project is being implemented in cooperation with humanitarian organisations APOPO, which specialises in the use of animals for demining, and the Mine Advisory Group (MAG). Dog teams will help speed up the demining process and make it more accurate, which is especially important in difficult terrain and dense vegetation.