Dam burst poses new threat: runaway mines swept away by water

Can an anti-tank mine weighing a dozen kilos capable of destroying multi-ton armored vehicles travel along a riverbed? The answer is yes, according to Andy Duncan, Red Cross weapons contamination coordinator in Ukraine, as water has flooded fields and villages after a strategic frontline dam burst in Kherson on Tuesday. "Like an avalanche in the Alps, all these mines have been swept away and are going to end up downstream. So they are not going to be floating," he details during an interview with EL PAÍS in his office in Kiev, the capital.

If before it was known more or less where these minefields could be located, by the positions of the troops, now all reference has been lost and some may end up buried under several meters of sediment, so locating and recovering them will be "an additional problem," according to Duncan. And not only that, he adds, but everything happens in a country where from time to time there are still active remains of World War I and II. This reference to events up to more than a century ago serves to understand the dimension of what happened this week and the time that these mines may continue to pose a threat to the population.

The state emergency services, which centralize the demining and cleaning of war remnants in Ukraine, estimate that there are contaminated about 174,000 square kilometers, more than 25% of the 603,000 square kilometers of the country, an extension comparable to twice that of Andalusia.

Kherson was already Ukraine's most heavily mined region along with Kharkiv when the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper, where each army occupies one of the banks, blew up on Tuesday. It is a strategic enclave near the mouth of the Dnieper River. The destruction of the dam has caused the flooding of dozens of villages and thousands of hectares around the front line, where fighting continues unabated to rescue or assist the few inhabitants who remain there. These explosive devices placed as defense by the military – both sides use them – are now underwater and, in some cases, out of control along the widened channel.

The danger comes, especially, from anti-tank mines such as those used since World War II and affects both the western side of the Dnieper, under Ukrainian control, and the eastern, occupied by the Russians, details Andy Duncan. In this sense, he believes that the floods have affected the eastern margin to a greater extent because the terrain is lower than sea level. Despite the restrictions imposed by Moscow, Red Cross personnel also have staff in that area. The Kiev authorities estimate that the flood has forced a Russian withdrawal of between 5 and 15 kilometers from the positions they occupied before the dam burst. However, the disaster does not seem to have altered the plans of the offensive planned months ago by the Ukrainian army on Russian positions, which is experiencing its most intense clashes in the neighboring region of Zaporizhia.

The lack of control over an undetermined number of antipersonnel and anti-tank mines will hinder the return to normality for decades, warn both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the main world demining organization, Halo Trust, which has had to suspend its work in seven minefields that have been flooded. "The torrent of water that swept the lower Dnieper River was powerful enough to dislodge landmines and, in some cases, cause the detonation of 10-kilogram anti-tank mines," the Halo Trust said in a statement Friday.

The Kiev government and the occupation authorities installed by Russia in part of Ukraine have also warned of the increased risks. Oleh Kiper, governor of Odessa, a region on the shores of the Black Sea, asked people on Thursday to remain on guard and away from the coast and beaches before the arrival of mines and unexploded ordnance next to trees, remains of houses and dead animals from the flood. Nova Kakhovka is located about 60 kilometers from the mouth of the Dnieper, while the Odessa coastline is more than 200 kilometers away. Citizens are posting videos on social media with roof debris and furniture stranded on the Odessa coast.

Meanwhile, local authorities in Kherson reported Friday that the water level has stopped rising. But that will not allow the location of that scattered weaponry at the moment, since that work cannot be undertaken while the area remains a battlefront, acknowledges Duncan, who previously worked at the Halo Trust. "This is a humanitarian and ecological catastrophe and the presence of huge amounts of landmines magnifies the risk to civilians in the area. We won't know the exact number of landmines displaced until the waters subside," said Mike Newton, head of Halo in Ukraine.

In the short term, the ICRC needs to map where the mines are likely to be and where they might have ended up by force in order to make estimates prior to clearance work, "because neither side is going to tell," Duncan says. In the long term, when the water recedes, "detailed analysis will begin" of those places, but "only when the fighting in that area stops."

Anti-tank mines planted by the Army on a farm in Shestakove, Kharkiv region.Luis de Vega

"The rupture of the Nova Kakhovka dam will put lives at risk due to the density of minefields that have gone downstream and are now underwater," the Halo Trust warned in a June 8 statement, referring to the Ingulets River, a tributary of the Dnieper, where its teams have been forced to interrupt demining. "Whether the mines have been moved or not, clearing the area will take much longer and pose a greater danger to our deminers and the local population," it added.

The military had placed anti-tank mines on the banks of the Ingulets during the Russian occupation of part of the Mikolaiv region, neighboring Kherson and battlefront for long months in 2022. A counteroffensive by local troops drove the Russian invaders away from that area in November last year. The floods now prevent the work of cleaning those fields by the Halo Trust, which details that of the nearly 5,000 mines located in Mikolaiv since that month, 464 were placed on river banks. These mines pose a "mortal risk" to civilians in the area who are engaged in agriculture, livestock or river fishing, warns this organization.

"In a war, people don't like to offer information about where they lay mines. And until the need for the minefield has disappeared, they will not be favorable," concludes Andy Duncan, of the Red Cross. And the flooded Kherson, where mines scattered by the flood have increased the threat, remains the front line today.

Follow all the international information on Facebook and Twitter, or in our weekly newsletter.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Read more

I'm already a subscriber