New Ukrainian demining system Germina was presented at the exhibition

Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has returned almost 2,000 sq km of de-occupied territories to productive use. In total, the area of cleared land now amounts to 36,942 sq km. At the same time, 137,058 sq km of Ukrainian land, including occupied territories and water areas, remain potentially contaminated. This was reported by First Deputy Prime Minister — Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko during a meeting on the status of humanitarian demining measures chaired by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

«We have managed to build a humanitarian demining market, at the foundation of which lies the state programme for compensation of agricultural land clearance costs. This has led to an increase in mine action operators, and currently Ukraine has over 100 national and international operators certified for various processes: from awareness-raising to clearance and destruction of explosive ordnance. In parallel, technologies are developing to meet market needs: from domestic demining machines to a prioritisation system that, based on collected datasets and with the help of AI, can determine the priority of clearing specific sites,» said Svyrydenko.

As of the end of June, over 2,500 hectares of agricultural land have been cleared under the state compensation programme. Clearance work is ongoing on nearly 14,000 more hectares. The state has already allocated UAH 847 million for these works.

Farmers whose plots are located in de-occupied territories can participate in the state compensation programme by submitting an application for demining through the State Agrarian Register.

The launch of the humanitarian demining market has given impetus to the development of domestic machine building: Ukrainian demining machines such as «Zhermina», «HART», and «Zmii» are now certified and working in the fields. Leasing and rental programmes for such equipment are being launched, making it more accessible for mine action operators and accelerating land clearance.