"They found an anti-personnel mine disguised as a child's toy"
In the liberated territories in the special operation zone, where the fighting has already ended, people still cannot start a peaceful life. Unexploded mines and shells are still in the ground. Sappers are currently working on this, clearing roads, fields and houses of local residents. About what specialists have to deal with in the course of their work, see the Izvestia article.
Patience is the main quality of a sapper
The surroundings of one of the recently liberated cities of the Donetsk People's Republic. An ear-splitting pop at the edge of the field, a rolling echo, followed by silence again. There is no reason to panic — Russian sappers are working. All this is not far from a peaceful street, where children have started playing football again, and old people are repairing and painting fences. But hard and painstaking work is underway nearby: sappers are clearing the land of the consequences of the war.
The front has gone far away, the line of military clashes has already moved back tens of kilometers. But the memory of the confrontation is here — in every centimeter of the ground. A lot of unexploded shells and various ammunition, and even specially left booby traps disguised as children's toys - that's what the sappers have to deal with.
I watch as eight people line up and listen intently to the latest instructions. This is a group of an engineering and sapper unit under the command of a senior lieutenant with the call sign Terek. Everyone has a metal detector, a probe, a protective suit, a bulletproof vest, and a helmet at their disposal. Every step is under control. Every sound of the device is a signal of potential danger.
"We're doing a complete cleanup right now," Terek explains. — We divide the area into squares, squares into plots, and plots into cells of 25 by 50 meters. Each fighter has his own zone. There are comrades on the left and right, and a cover behind. The work goes strictly according to the scheme: two flags — borders and a corridor, you slowly walk forward, come back, move the flag, forward again. Patience is the main quality of a sapper. You can't survive here without him.
I pay attention to the metal detectors in the hands of the fighters. It turned out to be the latest Vector-6M. They detect their targets at a depth of up to 30 centimeters, and they work both in the rain and in the heat. Light and sound indication, reinforced coil. It would seem that the technique is done perfectly. But it won't save you either if you're not as attentive as possible.
What kind of mines are used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces
A sapper engineer with the call sign Lynx carefully runs the device over the ground. A beep, a splash on the scale — stop. A paddle, a probe, a slight movement — and now the outline of an old antipersonnel mine emerges from the ground. It turned out to be Soviet-made. And even if it is already noticeably rusted, it still carries a deadly danger.
—A sapper is like a surgeon,— says Lynx. "He's the only patient on Earth. And snakes live in it. You don't know if she's alive or not until you touch her.
He draws attention to the fact that the neighboring field has already been cleared last spring.
— In autumn, sunflowers and rye were already ripening there. And it's still not safe here, especially after the arson attacks. Fields often burned during the fighting, and many mines melted, lost their shape, but not their destructive power. MON-90 was found here the other day," says the engineer. — The mine was on fire, the body is like wax, but the fuse has been preserved. Imagine what would have happened if a tractor had run over her?
Our conversation is interrupted when the deputy commander's voice with the call sign Krest comes over the radio. He found a PMN-2 type mine. It's melted and charred, but its filling is still active.
"There are no wires or sensors around,— the Cross reports.
"I'm coming to you." Keep your position, don't touch it," Terek replies.
They approach, experts assess the situation, make a decision — an explosion on the spot. They lay TNT, move away to a safe distance, and then a dull pop — and the mine is defused.
"Sometimes you find a sandwich: under one mine is another," the commander explains. — This is the handwriting of Western instructors. They like to complicate things. One mistake, and that's it. We're not heroes, we're just doing our job, but every time it's like the first time.
The guys told us a curious episode from their work. Not so long ago, sappers discovered an aerial bomb in the area. A 500-kilogram munition went 12 meters underground. The infantrymen helped to find it — they remembered that there was a "landing" here during the battle, but there was no explosion. Then the sappers with the call signs Filin and Grom spent five days digging the ground, doing without equipment, manually clearing the ground.
"It turned out that the bomb had hit an old irrigation canal," Grom recalls. — It didn't work only by a miracle. If someone had started digging a well, the explosion would have leveled everything within a radius of 100 meters.
Mines in children's toys
There was a case when a message came from Staromalinovka: the locals began to restore order in the kindergarten, which had been in the battle zone for a long time. It turned out that the building was booby-trapped. The Terek fighters arrived at the site in 40 minutes.
"We found an anti—personnel mine disguised as a child's toy," says a sapper with the call sign Pharaoh. "There was a stuffed panda in the pantry, and explosives inside. Probably, someone wanted to make a bookmark in case the troops returned. It's a chilling thing to find. We took it down on the spot, took it outside the village and destroyed it. Just imagine: a child takes a toy.
After this incident, the entire kindergarten was examined. Three more explosive objects were found. Everything was defused, of course.
A similar incident occurred in a nearby village. A call came from there: a local girl found an old toy in a barn with an antipersonnel mine inside.
"Someone put a mine in there. Apparently, they wanted to leave a "surprise" when leaving," says Pharaoh. — This is a baseness that can no longer be lower. It's good that she didn't touch the toy — the girl said that she immediately called her grandfather, and he called us. They were neutralized on the spot.
After that, all the sheds, storerooms and basements in the village were checked by sappers. And we found two more such bookmarks.
In a newly restored house, local builders, while dismantling a collapsed wall, came across a strange object embedded in the masonry. At first they thought it was just a metal box, but the bomb squad was called. It turned out, not in vain. There was a directional mine inside, disguised as a structural element. It was established that a Ukrainian saboteur was working on it. He laid it out back in 2022, when the house was under their control.
"We carefully dismantled the wall, removed the mine, took it outside the village and blew it up," says the sapper.
Every day is like the last
In Volnovakha, a city in the DPR that has survived multiple cluster munition attacks, sappers have been working for weeks. Not all cassettes explode — dozens of combat elements remain in the ground or on the roofs of houses. One of the fighters recalls how 14 cassettes were found on one of the streets, trapped in a storm drain.
— We checked everything: trees, crowns, attics. It's like a ghost hunt. You don't know where death might be. But she's there," he says.
Road cleaning remains one of the most urgent tasks. The Ukrainian Armed Forces use drones, which drop mines directly on the roads leading to the liberated villages. This was the case on the way to the village of Pavlovka, which is located at the crossroads of important roads, including Ugledar. A week before our arrival, a civilian car was blown up by a mine dropped from a drone. The father of three children died.
"We check the roads every day,— says Sapper Grom. — We have equipment with ice rinks, but we often work manually. People are afraid to drive, but if we don't clean up, the ambulance won't come to them, the bread truck won't go. It's a fight for every kilometer.
Local farmers are among those who are particularly grateful to the sappers. Ivan Titarenko is one of them. His farm is located a few kilometers from the contact line, and he was able to return to work only after mine clearance.
"To be honest, I thought I'd never get on a tractor again," Ivan says. — In the spring of 2023, my guys found a mine right in the furrow. After that, we stopped. Thanks to the sappers: we went through the whole field, every meter. Now I'm quietly planting corn and I know that my tractor won't become a coffin.
Ivan has 50 hectares of arable land. There's a lot of work. But the main thing is that the earth now feeds again, not kills. There is gratitude and optimism in his voice.
— We've been through so much. And now... Sappers are warriors of peace. That's what I call them. Without them, life would not have started anew here.
In the process of communication, it turns out that Terek's squad has been working in the SVO zone for more than a year. They started with power lines, then residential buildings, farmlands. Everything is under threat. Now, according to the commander, the situation has improved: over the last quarter, the number of finds has decreased by a third. But you can't relax.
— Now the main work is underground, — says the sapper with the call sign Rascal. — Everything that was on the surface has already been removed. But the ground is moving, the water is washing away, old mines are sinking or, conversely, surfacing. Sometimes there have been finds since the Second World War," the expert notes.
All the fighters have received serious training: first at the training grounds, then at the mine action training center. We passed tests, worked out each algorithm. There are no random people here.
"We became a family,— says Terek. — I know that I can rely on any of them. It requires a cool head, nerves of steel, and the ability to work in silence. Every day is like the last, but this is our job.
When asked how long it will take to completely clear the Donbas, the sappers do not give exact dates.
— You can remove everything that the devices see. But the earth does not forget," says Rascal. — There will be finds in 10 years. The main thing is that children going to school never see a sapper detonate a mine by the roadside again. That's what we're working for.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
