KHARKIV A farm called Husarivske, located in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, was caught in the middle of the war.
The entire farm was occupied for about a month in the spring of last year. Firefights took place in the fields, and the Russian troops made way for the base’s maintenance buildings, most of which are now in an unusable condition.
– All our machines are in pieces, 180 cubic meters of diesel have been destroyed. All the grain was in storage, but because of the fires, everything is doomed, farmer Anatoly Ischenko enumerates.
At the end of March 2022, the Ukrainians liberated part of the farm, and the village of Husarivka, which served as its center, was on the front line for a few months. When the Ukrainian forces liberated the entire area in September 2022, the Russians mined the part of the fields that had been in their possession when they retreated.
Work on the farm started again only recently. In May, we managed to sow corn and cereals so that the animals would have fodder next fall and winter. Only a tenth of the couple of thousand cows and sheep are left.
Before sowing, the workers of the farm went to collect war scraps left behind from the fields: pieces of grenades, ammunition boxes, parts of parachutes.
– We know that there are no mines south of Husarivka, so we go around the fields there, collecting the signs of war. Sometimes we throw the scrap on the edge of the fields, sometimes we leave them in the field and mark them with flags so that the tractors know how to go around them, Isitchenko says.
Still, only a fraction of the farm’s 5,700 hectares can be planted. Mined fields will remain uncultivated for a long time, as neither the state nor the farmers have the resources to clear them.
In Finnish terms, the Husarivske farm is gigantic. The average size of Finnish farms was last year 52 hectares, and the farm holding the top spot is only a quarter From the size of Husarivske.
A third of the Kharkiv area is mined
Kharkiv region is currently the most densely mined part of Ukraine. After the war, about one third of the area still has a mine hazard.
A couple of hundred experts work in the area with six demining machines, but in an area the size of Belgium it is a small amount. The first step was the clearing of roads and power lines.
White ribbons are hung on trees along the roads in the Kharkiv region. They are a sign that the road has been checked for mines up to the strip. It’s still dangerous behind the tapes.
A large part of the fields is still mined. Around the fields there are red warning signs telling about the danger of mines.
Volunteers trained by the international organization Halo Trust also work in demining work around Kharkiv. The NGO promotes demining in war-torn countries. In Ukraine, it has trained almost 700 people during the war, about a third of whom are women.
Since the liberation of the Kharkiv area, at least 192 people have fallen victim to explosives. 38 of them died, the rest were injured.
During the war, almost 70,000 unexploded ordnances have been destroyed in all areas freed from occupation. The clearance work has claimed the lives of eight experts.
“This is a lottery game”
Not all farmers can wait for official demining. Many rely on their own skills when clearing.
One of them is a farmer on the Hrakove estate Oleksandr Kryvtsun. Together with his son and farm workers, he has built a remote-controlled demining machine from an old tractor.
The machine is based on a T150 model tractor produced in 1988 at the Kharkiv tractor factory. It was replaced with a more modern engine and parts from other agricultural machines and war machines left behind by the Russians were installed.
– We didn’t have the same kind of hydraulic roller as the minesweepers of the state rescue service, so we took the roller from a sunflower cutter. The machine has parts of a Russian assault tank and a battle tank. We just welded all the parts together.
Mine clearance takes place in such a way that the machine works the ground in front of it with its roller and thus looks for mines left there. Remote control works up to two kilometers away. However, the mechanics using the machine have stated that the best distance is 300 meters. The screen and controls fit in a box the size of a small suitcase.
The plane has hit a rolling mine three times and an anti-personnel mine once. Every time it had to be repaired and its structure updated.
– I tell everyone that this is dangerous, this is a lottery game. We started this only because we had no other options, says Kryvtsun.
In total, the clearing machine project cost Kryvtsun almost one million hryvnias, or about 25,000 euros. In a few weeks, 1,300 hectares of the farm’s two thousand hectares were cleared.
When the first sowing job is over, the purpose is to clear the rest of the fields. But mines are not the farm’s only problem.
Hrakove was in the firing line for a few months. The Russians stored ammunition and war machines in grain warehouses. They burned all the foreign agricultural machinery as they retreated.
– We have calculated that the damage caused to the machines alone is in the order of one and a half million dollars.
Farmers in the Kharkiv region are also troubled by the lack of workers, the general rise in price levels and the fact that banks do not grant loans.
– We are in the so-called red zone, i.e. too close to firefights. Because of this, banks don’t want to take risks and give us loan money, Kryvtsu’s amount.
State resources go to war first
All these problems are also familiar in Husarivske. Only a third of the previous two hundred employees remain.
The financial situation is tight, because the farm’s assets were tied up in warehouses. Last year’s growing season was missed, and this year’s season is late. While the first grain harvest is normally collected in July, we only got to sow in May.
Even though the situation is difficult, both Hrakov and Husarivske understand well why the state does not provide faster help.
– We are grateful that we were released from the occupation at all. It is understandable that when there is a war in the country, all resources go to it and not to us, says Anatoly Isitchenko of Husarivske.
Oleksandr Kryvtsun says that the state machines clear the mines so thoroughly that their pace is very slow.
– Next to our field, they cleared under the power line with such a foreign-made machine. It took four days to clear two and a half kilometers.
The topic can be discussed until 22 June 2023 at 11 pm.