While much of the press attention when it comes to the Ukraine war involved destroying tanks and drones dropping bombs, one older weapon of war sometimes gets forgotten: mines.
And know this: there are so many mines now buried in the soil of Ukraine that it could take decades to get rid of them all.
Some experts even call Ukraine a giant minefield, with most of the mines being put in place by Putin’s forces.
Incredible – Ukrainian Soldier Defuses Huge Pile Of Landmines Using Makeshift Tool
Incredible video footage shared on social media shows when an unknown Ukrainian soldier deactivates a grenade strategically placed below a landmine inside a residential building.
In the clip, the Ukrainian soldier explains how a grenade had been placed beneath a landmine, preventing the grenade from exploding. The clip was posted in April.
To defuse the grenade, and therefore prevent a pile of landmines strategically placed above and around the grenade from exploding, the soldier uses a piece of wire that he fashioned into a tool.
Recording himself inside a residential building in an unknown part of Ukraine, the soldier takes off his helmet and explains that any protective gear would not save him from the blast if he fails to defuse the grenade.
“I probably won’t need the helmet. If it detonates, the helmet is unlikely to save me,” the man tells the camera. “So I took it off to be comfortable.”
The man then shows the camera the tool he made, which he named a “fuse,” and places the camera on the ground to film him defusing the grenade. The video shows the man carefully placing the wire into the grenade until it is “half-way defused.” Then, the soldier inserts a grenade pin into the weapon, being extra careful not to move the landmine placed above it.
“Now I’ll additionally try to insert a pin in there,” he adds. “Take the pin, straighten it, and insert it very carefully.”
The soldier admits that his hands are shaking as he attempts to insert the pin and adds that it’s important “not to be scared.”
Once the grenade appears to be deactivated, the man says “God help me” and then proceeds to life up the landmine, remove the grenade, and put the landmine back down.
The soldier then shows the rest of the room on camera. The room appears to be an abandoned bedroom, complete with a bed, cabinets, and framed family photographs on the wall.
Dozens of mines are scattered across the floor and bed, and the soldier admits that any number of grenades or other weapons could still be hidden beneath the mines.
While the soldier in the video did not explicitly state that the landmines had been left inside of the residential building on purpose, Russian forces have been accused of deliberately leaving behind mines and other weapons as a way of “booby-trapping” buildings when Ukrainian forces successfully took back control over territories occupied by the Russians.
Specifically, private fighters from the Wagner Group are often accused of using illegal tactics like this – not just in Ukraine, but even in Libya.
Ukrainian soldier demonstrates defusing a grenade placed under a mine in a residential building. pic.twitter.com/TsSWvhLLVX
— Dmitri (@wartranslated) April 10, 2023
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
