On Ukraine’s mined front, even corpses can kill

ZAPORIZHZHIA REGION, Ukraine, Aug 3 (Reuters) – When the bodies of Russian troops were found in an abandoned position, something seemed wrong with the corpses.

“There were three or four of his dead. Two guys were lying on top of each other, which made us suspicious, because if there had been an explosion they would have been thrown in different directions, but here, one is lying on top of the other,” he added. said Volodymyr, a 47-year-old sapper with arguably the most dangerous job in Ukraine: clearing land mines on the front lines.

“We were right not to touch them, because when we got there with a ‘kitten,’ we saw that there was a PM mine under them,” he said.

The kitten is a collapsible steel hook used by sappers to dislodge booby traps, nicknamed for its retractable pincers that sprout like cat’s claws. The PM is a Soviet-era antipersonnel mine.

“It exploded and blew them both away, but we stayed safe, thank God.”

Occupation Russian troops have planted land mines and booby traps along hundreds of kilometers of the Ukrainian front, a tactic Kiev commanders describe as the main reason their long-awaited summer counter-offensive has slowed down.

SAPPERS GO FIRST

For minesweepers like Volodymyr, every day carries mortal risk as they try to make the ground safe, first for their comrades to advance, and eventually for civilians to return home.

“We lose a sapper every day, either wounded or killed. It is a dangerous job. And whether a whole brigade advances or about 12 guys head out on their mission, it’s always the sappers who go first. It is very dangerous,” he said. .

The Russians “mine everything. They open doors, boxes and drawers, even toys,” he said. Even their own dead: “They know that our medical evacuation groups lift the wounded and dead, under whom they find these explosives. And this is very dangerous for us.”

Landmines inflicted colossal tolls in the first month of the counteroffensive launched in June, said Oleksandr, an anesthesiologist with the 128th Brigade who treats battlefield wounds at a frontline field hospital.

Since the mines forced the commanders to slow down the advance, the number of wounded arriving at their hospital has been significantly reduced. But the sappers keep getting killed.

“In that direction, the area is heavily mined and that is why it is being overtaken so slowly,” he said.

“We had cases where they brought in five or six wounded, and most of them turned out to be sappers. So, there is such a heavily mined area, that even one step off the already cleared route and this can end fatally. .”

Factories in Ukraine have been equipped to make equipment to help keep sappers safer. In addition to the “kitten” hooks, Volodymyr’s unit has been sent “spider boots”, which lift each foot off the ground on four metal legs, so any explosion they trigger won’t go off directly under the body. of a sapper

They are made by Ihor Iefymenko at a factory in Kharkiv, based on a modified Canadian prototype. He told Reuters he pitched the idea to emergency services after a relative lost a toe to a butterfly mine.

Oleksandr, the doctor who treats the sappers at the front, knows that the danger will not end anytime soon.

“There are definitely not enough sappers, and given the intensity of mining, even after the war, sappers will be one of the main professions,” he said.

“We would have liked to wake up one day as if it were a nightmare, a bad dream and we just shrugged our shoulders, washed ourselves with cold water and everything was left somewhere behind. But this is reality.”

Additional reporting by Vitalii Hnidyi in Kharkiv; Written by Peter Graff; Edited by Hugh Lawson

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