«We didn't wait for them to do it for us»: how Nibulon demined 98% of its fields in the Mykolaiv region in just one year

To date, 57 mine action operators are registered in Ukraine, who can go out into the fields and carry out demining with a license. One of them is the Nibulon company. It became the first among Ukrainian agricultural producers to receive a permit for demining agricultural land.

For more than a year of this work, the company managed to survey and demine almost all of its potentially dangerous lands in the Mykolaiv region. However, most of the company's fields are still under occupation — these are the lands of the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions.

About the path of the Nibulon company to the humanitarian demining of lands, the help of international partners and the demining of the Mykolaiv region — read in the material NikVesti.

Nibulon demined 5 thousand hectares during the year

The decision to engage in humanitarian demining of fields at the Nibulon company was made almost two years ago — in February 2023. However, first, for this, it was necessary to pass the appropriate certification, the main criteria of which are: the availability of a material and technical base and experienced sappers.

«Today there are quite a lot of mine countermeasures operators, 57 to be exact. And when we made the decision to create an operator, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. That's why we decided not to wait for the state to do it for us, but independently certified the NTO (non-technical survey of territories, — note),» Mykhailo Rizak, Director of Interaction with Authorities of the Nibulon Company, told NikVesti.

The company's newly created demining department took up this issue. And within two months of its work, in April 2023, Nibulon became an operator of mine countermeasures and received a certificate for non-technical survey of territories from the Mine Countermeasures Center of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The NTO certificate allowed the company to collect and analyze information about the state of the territory in order to further classify it by hazard status.

First of all, Nibulon began surveying the fields of the de-occupied Snihurivka district, Mykhailo Rizak said. This is more than 5 thousand hectares, of which less than 2% turned out to be contaminated, he added. Such crops as sunflower, rapeseed, winter wheat and winter barley are grown on these fields.

«Basically, our plots of land are places where combat operations took place with the use of Grads, artillery shells and mortar mines. That is, there were landslides, drones flew by somewhere,» Mykhailo Rizak commented on the condition of the fields at the beginning of demining.

Today, the company calls the cases of repeated littering of fields by enemy drones, which still continue to fly over Ukraine, a «big difficulty».

«We have had no incidents with strike drones, but there have been incidents with reconnaissance drones. In other words, reconnaissance drones were falling on our land plots,» said Mykhailo Rizak.

Another problem in the company is called black sappers who «demine» fields without a license. They do not cooperate with the authorities and do not have practical experience in the disposal and transportation of explosive objects, Mykhailo Rizak clarified.

«We observe that some black sappers are throwing mines with which they have no practical experience of working on land plots of other mine action operators. These can be farmers, uncertified operators who cannot cooperate in the legal field with the State Emergency Service and other operators. That is, they are actually natural persons who, at their peril and risk, carry out, so to speak, mine countermeasures.

There are cases when a farmer hires natural persons without experience, but who declare experience. That is, no one checked their experience, they are not certified as operators of mine countermeasures. And they are already carrying out certain types of activities there,» said Mykhailo Rizak, director of interaction with authorities of the Nibulon company.

But despite this, during the year of operation, Nibulon surveyed all its potentially dangerous fields and returned 98% of their territories to cultivation, Mykhailo Rizak reported. These are 5.5 thousand hectares in Snihurivka, Shyroke, Novopavlivka and Novopetrivka territorial communities.

«A total of 25,500 hectares were potentially dangerous from the beginning of the war. Of these, 20,000 hectares are still under temporary occupation. That is, we do not have access to them. These are the lands of branches of the Kupiansk, Kharkiv and Luhansk regions,» added Mykhailo Rizak.

As of October 2024, the company has only 2% of its fields in the Mykolaiv region left to clear. This is 134.5 hectares of land in the Shyroke territorial community.

«We 100% complied with the deadlines and fulfilled the plan to return part of our branch to land cultivation. It should also be understood that Nibulon is a company that exports only 5% of its own agricultural products, the other 95% are small and medium-sized farmers, that is, about 3,500 small and medium-sized farmers who sell products to us. We are interested in these farmers returning to farming as soon as possible,» he said.

Nibulon is currently calculating the total losses the company has suffered since the start of the full-scale war. Previously, this amount reaches about 500 million dollars, he said.

«And we will be able to say specifically about the mined territories when the experts have already finalized this report, and we will be able to publicly come out with a detailed distribution of all losses. But our company is probably the company that suffered the biggest losses,» Mykhailo Rizak added.

Who clears the fields and how?

«Each plot of land is an individual case,» says Mykhailo Rizak, director of interaction with authorities at Nibulon.

After all, in order to start demining the fields, it is first necessary to find out which of all the potentially dangerous territories are actually mined.

For this purpose, Nibulon conducts a non-technical land survey. That is, the company's specialists collect information about the potentially polluted territory: they communicate with witnesses, the local population, military units that were in these locations, and also find out what types of hostilities were going on there, what types of shells were used there.

After that, sappers carry out a technical survey of the land. This is the next stage, during which the territory is examined with search equipment.

In total, the company employs 12 sappers who have the necessary license for demining. All of them «had practical experience in military units or authorities,» Mykhailo Rizak explained.

«Our entire group of sappers is equipped with body armor of a class suitable for certification, metal detectors, and other elements,» he added.

Currently, about 150 employees of Nibulon are undergoing training in non-technical surveying of territories.

«We decided to scale up this activity because we see that the threat is quite high and the state cannot cope without the active participation of mine countermeasures operators and socially responsible companies,» Mykhailo Rizak explained.

And with detonation, transportation and disposal of explosive objects, Nibulon sappers are assisted by specialists of the State Emergency Service, as the company currently does not have the appropriate license.

«Today, we interact with the State Emergency Service, due to the fact that we are not certified for transportation, detonation and disposal,» Mykhailo Rizak clarified.

The German government helped buy demining machines

Nibulon already uses special machines of the German-Swiss manufacturer GCS-200 for mechanized demining of fields. Currently, the company has four of them.

«It cannot be said that it is too little or too much. We are an operator that has one of the largest number of machines to understand. A year ago, all of Ukraine had 36 cars, we had two. Today, there are about 100 machines, and we have 4 machines. That is, we have a rather significant role. But there are operators who have even more — about 7 machines,» explained the director of interaction with authorities of the Nibulon company.

Demining machines were purchased with the support of the German government on the basis of 50% co-financing. In total, Nibulon plans to allocate 9.6 million euros to demining fields. This is the financing that the company received under the project of the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany «DeveloPPP» until 2025.

«These funds provide for the purchase of demining machines and other expenses. In particular, for full-fledged work in the field, in addition to the sappers themselves, supporting personnel are needed. These are cars and an ambulance team in order to minimize the risk of loss of life and health of our sappers,» said Mykhailo Rizak.

All four demining machines are remote controlled. That is, the sapper is in a safe zone — up to a kilometer away from the special equipment, he explained.

«But we have a unique case. Ukraine continues to clear mines during the period of active combat, and we have quite active elements of radio-electronic warfare — EWs. Due to this, controllability with the required accuracy is narrowed to a kilometer,» he added.

Nibulon helps farmers demine their fields

After the launch of the agricultural land demining market, the Nibulon company began to participate in tenders as an operator of mine countermeasures.

Farmers submit applications for demining their own fields, a corresponding register is formed from them, and the Center for Humanitarian Demining announces tenders for demining agricultural lands in order of priority. In 2024, 3 billion hryvnias were allocated from the state budget for demining farm fields.

Currently, Nibulon is participating in tenders for demining fields in four regions: Mykolaiv region, Zaporizhzhia region, Dnipropetrovsk region, and Kherson region.

However, in order to become a full participant in the tender, Nibulon plans to be certified for detonation and transportation of GNP. Currently, the company is being assisted by specialists of the State Emergency Service.

«Before the auction, we did not certify this process for one simple reason: we have a fairly high-quality interaction with the State Emergency Service, just like any other operator. But since it is not possible to simply declare cooperation with the State Emergency Service in the tenders, we cooperate with other operators who are certified for this process in order to participate,» said Mykhailo Rizak.

The company expects to receive a certificate for this type of activity, as the director of interaction with authorities says, «in the near future»: «I think it will be around the spring of 2025. We are certified to provide a full cycle of service provision.

Yuliia Boichenko, NikVesti