Why the farmers of Mykolaiv region continue to work, despite the mine danger

Illustrative photo of NikVesti

Farmers, despite the mine danger, go out into the fields. When explosive objects are found — mines or unexploded shells — they put tags, then pass the information to the deminers.

NikVesti found out why farmers continue to work despite the mine danger.

There are cases where farmers do not want to wait for demining to reach them, and work in the fields at their own peril and risk, because for them this land is the only source of income. Some farmers decide to survey the fields themselves to speed up demining.

Kostiantyn Kolisnichenko, a farmer from the village of Lymany, is no exception. Together with his father, he independently went out into the fields and marked the places where they saw suspicious objects. They inspected the territory, wrote down the coordinates and passed them on to the State Emergency Service. Sappers came and demined the fields.

Farmer Kostiantyn Kolisnichenko, photo: NikVesti

«Already then, we carried out state demining, the engineering troops finished it at the beginning of September 2023. But even after that, there were cases when people blew themselves up on the field,» says Kostia.

Despite the risks from the projectiles, he continues to work: he says there is no time to put farming on hold.

Read also the article NikVesti «Self-demining: why farmers of Mykolaiv region and Kherson region have to survey their lands themselves», where we found out why agricultural producers have to risk their own lives, whether the government helps farmers to demine their lands and how Mykolaiv and Kherson farmers carry out their own explosive objects from their fields.

NikVesti asked the deputy head of the Mykolaiv RMA, Heorhii Reshetilov, about his expectations regarding the complete demining of the Mykolaiv Oblast. He noted that despite all the difficulties, the farmers of the Mykolaiv region do not give up, they continue to work, feed the country and the world. But for full recovery, farmers need real help from the state and international partners. After all, demining is not only an issue of the economy, but also an issue of security and the future.

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We will remind that this year in the Mykolayiv region they plan to survey 44 thousand hectares of agricultural land. Since the beginning of the year, explosives technicians have already surveyed 5 thousand 96 hectares, of which 2 thousand 99 hectares have been demined.

In general, it is worth noting that the pace of this year's survey exceeds last year's indicators, where on average, pyrotechnics surveyed 22.8 thousand hectares of agricultural land per month. According to the results of four months of 2024, pyrotechnics reached an average figure of 28.75 thousand hectares per month. Thus, since the beginning of 2024 , 108,000 hectares of agricultural land have been demined in Ukraine.

We have also collected all the necessary information about the types of explosive objects and how to behave if you find explosives. Specialists of the State Emergency Service constantly urge residents of Mykolaiv to be careful and not to touch suspicious objects, not to try to disassemble them, move them from one place to another, etc.

It should be noted that in Mykolaiv region, cases of explosions using explosive devices are not an exception, and according to the forecasts of the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine together with the Kyiv School of Economics, in the next 10 years, the number of victims of explosions using explosive devices in Ukraine may increase to 9 thousand people.