Minister: Clearing ordnance in Ukraine will take years
KYIV, UKRAINE >> Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky says it will take years to defuse the unexploded ordnance once the Russian invasion is over.
Monastyrsky told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday that the country will need Western assistance to carry out the massive undertaking after the war.
“A huge number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine, and a large part haven't exploded. They remain under the rubble and pose a real threat,” Monastyrsky said in the Ukrainian
capital, Kyiv. “It will take years, not months, to defuse them.”
In addition to the unexploded Russian ordnance, Ukrainian troops have planted land mines at bridges, airports and other key locations to prevent the Russians from using them.
“We won't be able to remove the mines from all that territory, so I asked our international partners and colleagues from the European Union and the United States to prepare groups of experts to demine the areas of combat and facilities that came under shelling,” Monastyrsky told the AP.
He noted that his ministry's demining equipment
was left in Mariupol, a besieged port city of 430,000 people that has been subjected to relentless shelling
for much of the war.
“We lost 200 pieces of equipment there,” Monastyrsky said.
One of the biggest challenges the Interior Ministry faces is fighting the fires caused by the relentless Russian shelling and airstrikes, Monastyrsky said. The country's emergency service, which the ministry oversees, is facing desperate shortages of personnel and equipment, he said.
A firefighter was killed Thursday during the Russian shelling of Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, while working to extinguish a blaze at a market that was caused by a previous attack.
Monastyrsky added that the emergency service's facilities in Kharkiv and Mariupol were completely destroyed in the Russian barrage. Monastyrsky stressed that Ukrainian emergency responders urgently need more specialized vehicles and protective equipment.
“The coming days will exacerbate a humanitarian catastrophe in critical areas,” he said. “I must say that casualties among civilians exceed our military losses by several times.”
The interior ministry has been busy trying to counter groups of Russian saboteurs that inundated the country to target bridges, gas pipelines and other infrastructure facilities, Monastyrsky said, adding that dozens of such groups have operated in Ukraine.