(Reuters) -Ukraine’s allies have committed to allocating $244 million and providing special equipment for the purpose of humanitarian mine clearance, First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Tuesday.
“Our task is not only to demine the entire territory in order to save people’s lives, but also to speed up this process,” Svyrydenko, who is also economy minister, said in a statement on the government’s website.
“This is a question of economic recovery, because the sooner we return potentially mined lands to circulation, the faster business will develop on them,” she said.
She said the donors included the United States, European Union, Japan, Germany, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, Austria, Switzerland, Korea and the Howard Buffett Foundation.
Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has left swathes of Ukraine strewn with mines and dangerous war detritus.
The U.S. State Department estimated in early December that some 160,000 square kilometres (62,000 square miles) of Ukrainian land needed to be checked for explosives hazards. That is nearly half the size of Germany.
Humanitarian demining, according to the United Nations, refers to clearing “land so that civilians can return to their homes and their everyday routines without the threat of explosive hazards.”
Svyrydenko said Ukraine would receive by the end of the year 10 demining machines from Croatia’s DOK-ING engineering firm and another 10 from the Swiss-based Global Clearance Solutions.
International partners have also committed to supplying hundreds of metal detectors and pyrotechnic machines, as well as individual demining kits and gear.
There were also agreements with DOK-ING and the Danish HYDREMA machinery firm regarding locating production in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Stephen Coates, Tom Balmforth and Toby Chopra)
