Minister: Clearing live ordnance in Ukraine will take years
After the Russian invasion is over, Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky says it will take years to defuse the unexplored ordnance. In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Monastyrsky said that the country will require Western assistance to complete the massive project after the war. "A large number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine, and the vast majority of them have not exploded." They are still under the rubble and pose a serious threat," Monastyrsky said in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. "It will take years to defuse them, not months." In addition to the unexplored Russian ordnance, Ukrainian troops have planted land mines at key locations to prevent the Russians from using them. "We won't be able to remove the mines from all of that territory," Monastyrsky told the Associated Press. "So I asked our international partners and colleagues from the European Union and the United States to prepare groups of experts to demise the areas of combat and facilities that were shelled." He mentioned that his ministry's demising equipment had been abandoned in Mariupol, a besieged port city of 430,000 people that has been subjected to relentless shelling for much of the war.