Ukraine: In Fields Sown With Bombs, Ukraine’s Farmers Risk Deadly Harvest

Some who till the breadbaskets of Ukraine have already lost three seasons of planting to war. With mines and cluster bombs widely scattered, normal harvests seem far in the future.

By Michael Schwirtz and Stanislav Kozliuk Photographs by Ivor Prickett
New York Times
March 11, 2023

Excerpt:

Producing watermelons, barley, sunflower oil and corn, Ukraine’s fertile lands have sustained generations, delivered huge amounts of food to the world and could now provide a desperately needed lifeline to the country. But although the Russian troops who once occupied many of the fields of southern Ukraine are long gone, they left a colossal array of explosives behind, some abandoned and others rigged as traps.

“They fully mined I don’t know how many dozens of kilometers,” said Mr. Hordienko, who farms wheat and rapeseed on 600 hectares in Kherson. “How we’re going to remove them all, no one yet knows.”

Ukraine’s military pushed Russian forces from a large section of the Kherson region last fall, but recovery after eight months of occupation has been slow.

Russian troops still control territory in the region east of the Dnipro River, meaning that a large chunk of newly liberated lands remains in range of Russian artillery. In areas at a safer distance, like Mr. Hordienko’s farmland, Ukrainian mine clearers known as sappers must still survey and remove thousands of land mines and unexploded ordnance before anyone can resume a normal life.

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