Japan's foreign minister announces transfer of demining machine to Ukraine

Japan's Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said this on Saturday during a visit to Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Ukrinform reports, citing The Washington Post.

"As a concrete cooperation under the Japan Cambodia Landmine Initiative, Japan will provide full-scale assistance to humanitarian mine action in Ukraine. Next week, we will provide Ukraine with a large demining machine, and next month, here in Cambodia, we will train Ukrainian personnel on how to operate the machine," she said.

"Cambodia, which has steadily advanced mine removal within its own country, is now a leader in mine action around the world," she noted, adding that Japan has consistently cooperated in Cambodia’s mine removal since the civil war.

Cambodian deminers are among the world’s most experienced, and several thousand have been sent in the past decade under U.N. auspices to work in Africa and the Middle East.

Cambodia in 2022 began training deminers from Ukraine, which also suffers from a high density of land mines and other unexploded munitions as the two-year Russian invasion drags on.

The NGO Landmine Monitor in its 2022 report listed both Cambodia and Ukraine among nine countries with "massive" mine contamination, meaning they had more than 100 square kilometers (38.6 square miles) of uncleared fields.

Ukraine's Deputy Interior Minister Bohdan Drapyatyi said during a meeting with a delegation of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) on July 1 that 144,000 square kilometers remained potentially mined in Ukraine.

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