Crimes of the Russian army: over 1,000 civilians blown up by anti-personnel mines

Since the beginning of the large-scale invasion of the deoccupied territories, 1,083 civilians have been blown up by Russian anti-personnel mines. Of these, 333 were killed and 750 were injured.

This was reported by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

The most contaminated liberated territories remain the Kharkiv, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.

This was reported by representatives of the Main Department of Mine Action, Civil Protection and Environmental Safety of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine at the Fifth Review Conference (5RC) on the Implementation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, which was held in the Kingdom of Cambodia within the framework of the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit.

The event was attended by representatives of 90 participating countries, 12 observer countries of the Ottawa Convention and almost 20 delegations of various international organizations.

The Ukrainian delegation told the international community in detail about the crimes of the Russian Federation related to the use of anti-personnel mines against the civilian population.

The conference participants were also provided with information about the shelling of humanitarian demining groups, which impede the full implementation of mine action measures.

In addition, they were informed about measures to clean up territories contaminated with Russian anti-personnel mines and the progress in this area that the Ministry of Defense units managed to achieve during 2024.

Thus, during a non-technical survey, 35,000 km² of the territory were marked as containing no evidence of risks. This allowed reducing the area of ​​potentially contaminated territories from 174,000 to 139,000 km².

In 2024, 10 new demining battalions were created in Ukraine. In addition, the fleet of mechanized demining vehicles increased from two units to 52, of which 42 are in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and 10 are in the State Special Transport Service.