The Kharkiv region, and clearance at agricultural scale

The territory recovered in the Kharkiv region in September 2022 was mostly agricultural, and that changes the nature of the work.

Clearing a street is slow and confined. Clearing thousands of hectares of arable land is a different discipline: mechanical demining machines that process ground at scale, followed by manual verification, followed by documented release. Partners funded the machines, which are expensive, specialised and were in short supply worldwide.

The clock nobody controls

Farmland has a calendar. A field cleared in March can be planted; a field cleared in July cannot, and the loss is a full season of output for that farm, that district and the export chain behind it. Clearance teams work against a deadline set by agronomy.

This is the argument I make to anyone who thinks demining is a humanitarian line item rather than an economic one. Every hectare released before sowing is grain in a silo eight months later.