UNMAS Demolition Service plans to deploy its mission in Ukraine
The process of humanitarian demining of contaminated territories of Ukraine and preparation for it is not easy and takes time. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is working to speed up the cleansing of our land from mines and shells that the Russian military planted on Ukrainian soil, and to involve experienced international organizations to help.
Thus, today, May 3, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Mary Akopian and Deputy Chairman of the State Emergency Service Dmitry Bondar held a meeting with representatives of the UN Mine Action Service in Ukraine Simon Porter and Anatoly Tymoshenko.
Currently, the UNMAS Demolition Service, in coordination with other UN units, is developing mechanisms in the context of UN assistance requested by Ukraine. Representatives of the UN Mine Action Service in Ukraine gather information on the needs of the areas in need of demining.
Mary Akopyan told the foreign delegation about the extent of contamination by the Russian army with explosive objects of the territory of our State and outlined the further actions of Ukrainian pyrotechnics, who in a short period of time have already carried out titanic work.
“According to our calculations, at present, about 300,000 square kilometers are polluted. This means that we will need tremendous technical and expert assistance for many years to come. Today, more than 16,000 hectares of Ukrainian land have already been mined by our pyrotechnics. More than 90 thousand explosive objects have been detected and defused,” said the deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
In turn, Deputy Chairman of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine Dmytro Bondar called on representatives of the UN Mine Protection Service, who have extensive experience in mining the territories of Somalia, Syria and Iraq, to involve their specialists, to share innovative working methods and the latest equipment.
“Currently, we are increasing the number of our fire technicians of the SNS. Another 400 fighters joined the 633. All of them are extremely professional, have been working in war conditions for 8 years. Large quantities of munitions that are prohibited by the Geneva Convention are detected and defused on a daily basis. We ask Ukraine to speed up the demining process by involving international pyrotechnic units,” said Dmytro Bondar.
In particular, the parties discussed the need for faster demining of fields. After all, unfortunately, we have cases when people with equipment in the fields blew up on a mine.
“Ukraine is an agrarian state, so Russia is trying to destroy our economy. Ensuring security during sowing is an extremely important task: in these difficult times, we cannot put the economy on hold,” said Mary Akopian.
The parties agreed with the UNMAS delegation to coordinate efforts on the issue of the speedy cleansing of Ukrainian territories from the remnants of Russian aggression, to involve representatives of the UN Service in the training and retraining of our specialists. We discussed the issue of material and technical assistance and handed over a list of necessary new equipment for Ukrainian pyrotechnics.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Photo by Andriy Novytskyi
