Ukraine plans to restore 80% of war-contaminated territories in 10 years.

Ukraine plans to restore 80% of areas contaminated by explosives within 10 years

Yulia Svyrydenko, the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine, announced that Ukraine has a plan to return 80% of potentially contaminated explosive objects to economic circulation over the next 10 years. She made this statement at the 'Demine Ukraine Forum 2024'.

According to Yulia Svyrydenko, at the beginning of the Russian invasion, there were many lands (174 thousand sq.km) in Ukraine that were potentially contaminated. But so far, 35 thousand sq.km have been returned to productive use.

'These figures wonderfully demonstrate the progress we have been able to achieve thanks to cooperation with international partners. At the beginning of 2023, we had no mine-clearing machines, and now there are already 151. Then there were only 6 demining operators and 1500 sapper, and now there are 69 operators and 4 thousand sappers,' said Yulia Svyrydenko.

However, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, this is not enough to fulfill the ambitious plan of returning 80% of contaminated territories within 10 years. She mentioned an article in 'The Washington Post', which predicts that the complete demining of Ukraine will take 700 years. Therefore, Ukraine has approved the National Strategy for Mine Action for the next 10 years and an operational plan for its implementation. The main priorities of the strategy are to protect people and communities, restore contaminated land, and improve the mine action system.