The Ministry of Internal Affairs calls on international partners and donors to become more actively involved in demining in Ukraine — Mary Akopyan
This was emphasized by the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine during a meeting with the delegation of the UN Office for Project Maintenance.
Mary Akopyan thanked the United Nations Office for Project Maintenance (UNOPS) and the entire UN system, its agencies and agencies for supporting the Ministry of Internal Affairs in responding to the challenges faced by the department in the face of Russian military aggression, primarily to clear the territories of explosive objects.
“We have already had several rounds of concrete and fruitful dialogue and aim to agree on our common roadmap on humanitarian demining for the next six months or a year. We call on our international partners and donors to become even more active in the process. Since a third of the country is mined, the pyrotechnic units of the State Emergency Service are working around the clock, some of them are actually manually operated. Now the key need is the appropriate technical equipment of the units, first of all, with robotics. 40 pyrotechnic calculations of the State Emergency Service require basic staffing,” the Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs emphasized.
She informed partners that since the beginning of the year the number of rescuers has doubled. Currently, it is planned to increase the number of the Service by another 500 specialists. Every day, the pyrotechnics of the State Emergency Service Inspectorate survey an average area of about 70 hectares, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, they have checked more than 760 kilometers of square territories.
According to Mary Akopyan, about 300 thousand explosive objects have already been defused by fire technicians of the State Emergency Service. In addition, the explosive units of the National Police, the National Guard and the State Border Service are involved in the demining.
In turn, Deputy Chairman of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine Dmytro Bondar spoke about the critical situation in the east and south of the country, in particular, in the de-occupied territories of Kharkiv, Kherson region and Mykolaiv region, where many settlements were destroyed and the infrastructure was completely destroyed. He stressed that the main task of the fire technicians of the State Emergency Service in these regions is the humanitarian demining of life support facilities for the further restoration of energy and gas supply, communications. And now there is an urgent need for appropriate technical support of pyrotechnics to carry out works on which the lives of civilians and the recovery of regions as a whole directly depend.
The Head of the UNOPS Delegation, Director of the Peace and Security Sector Amir Omeragich, noted that, in particular, thanks to Mary Akopyan's report at the Donor Conference in Switzerland organized on 28-30 November by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, international partners and donors have a clear idea of the scope of work currently performed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Emergency Service.
“Now Ukraine is the most contaminated country with explosive objects in the world. And we understand the scale of the needs. Therefore, already in Geneva, we started communication with donors, emphasizing that the future and success of anti-mine activities in Ukraine depends precisely on the effective work of the relevant government structures,” said Amir Omeragich.
He also said that UNOPS is preparing a future project of international technical assistance.
Jess Luckett, head of the mining operations department of the UNOPS Peace and Security Sector in Ukraine, said that 15 pyrotechnic calculations are planned to be equipped in advance. Currently, the types and models of equipment are specified, its quantity for the further search for the necessary financing.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
