EU allocating EUR 2M for new humanitarian mine action initiative in Ukraine

The European Union is allocating EUR 2 million to finance a new humanitarian mine action initiative in Ukraine, which will be carried out by Ukrainian handlers with their highly trained dogs.

The relevant statement was made by the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“Ukrainian handlers with their highly trained dogs are to be deployed to clear landmines and unexploded ordnance across the country in a project funded with a EUR 2million grant from the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI),” the report states.

The project will involve eight handlers, who are all Ukrainian women, and 16 Belgian Malinois, who underwent extensive training in Cambodia for five months before returning to Ukraine.

According to the EU Delegation to Ukraine, this project is being jointly implemented by humanitarian mine action organizations APOPO, which specializes in the deployment of animals for landmine clearance, and the Mines Advisory Group (MAG).

The dogs will be used to supplement MAG’s manual and mechanical clearance efforts in liberated Ukrainian territories, including in the Mykolaiv, Kherson and Kharkiv regions.

A reminder that around 156,000 square kilometers of Ukraine’s territory is remaining potentially dangerous due to being contaminated with ordnance following Russian terror.