INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
When Ukrainian forces launch their long-awaited counteroffensive this summer, they will be up against multiple lines of Russian
challenge posed to advancing Ukrainian troops, Russian minefields will likely cause hundreds of civilian deaths and require billions of
mines, according to a report from the British Royal United Services Institute released earlier this month.Mines are an integral part of
defensive fortifications like those in Russian-occupied areas of southern and eastern Ukraine, which are usually designed to funnel
advancing infantry into positions that leave them vulnerable to counter attacks and artillery barrages.Ukrainian sappers at work.Military
range from the TM-62, which detonates under the weight of a passing vehicle, to the advanced PTKM-1R, which uses sensors to detect and drop
a submunition on vehicles.Human Rights Watch has documented the use of more than a dozen different kinds of mines in Ukraine since the start
soldiers on the ground or by analysts looking at satellite imagery.Nevertheless, experts told The Moscow Times that Russia was almost
network of defensive fortifications.TM-62 mines.Vitaly V
them as spring turned to summer.A Ukrainian explosive ordnance disposal expert working in eastern Ukraine, who requested anonymity to speak
landmines while combat is ongoing, according to Matthew VanDyke, the founder of Sons of Liberty International, a Washington-based
all explosive ordnance in Ukraine could cost $37.6 billion over the next 10 years.And the economic dimension of the issue is made more
have long used landmines, with Soviet forces deploying them extensively in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Russian soldiers laying mines in
to be brutal and long-lasting
Since the late 1980s, for instance, an average of 110 people have been killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan
each month, according to the United Nations.Mines were also used extensively by Russian-backed separatists when they launched an insurgency
underway at the moment.Newton, the HALO Trust regional director, said that there will likely be a spike in casualties as displaced
Ukrainians return home.Before the invasion last year, he said, his organization estimated it would take 20 years to fully clear eastern
