How to mine the territory of Donbass
After many years of positional fighting, huge areas of the liberated territories remain mined or littered with unexploded ordnance. This not only poses a daily danger to civilians, but also threatens builders when working on new infrastructure facilities that are necessary to establish a peaceful life. The Izvestia correspondent visited one of the mine clearance sites in the south of the Donetsk People's Republic, saw how the use of unmanned vehicles helps in the dangerous work of sappers and talked with the civilian population.
It is robotic and safe
Behind a small rear village in fields that have ceased to be agricultural for 10 years, the silhouette of a large gray car is visible in the distance. This is a robot manufactured by the Chelyabinsk company IMSN, which is involved in mine clearance. This new machine is being tested, so both representatives of the manufacturer and the Ministry of Emergency Situations engineers are working on site.
— We have been working on mine clearance in the DPR for two years now. This is the third heavy machine in our line. The sites chosen for us are socially significant, dangerous and stressful — where people and equipment have already been undermined. Therefore, we are undergoing tests and clearing mines, saving human lives," says Anton, a representative of the plant.
Photo: IZVESTIA/Dmitry Astrakhan
Image source: iz.ru
Sappers launch a quadcopter to control movement not only from the cameras of the car itself, but also from the air. This way the "lanes" of mine clearance are much better visible. When ready, the machine operator launches a striker trawl and starts moving along the designated lane. Working with the remote is very simple: two joysticks and several buttons, almost like in computer games. And the drone's screen also allows you to check the view from above.
The impact of chains with loads on a rapidly rotating axis on hard clay soil raises a column of dust in front of the machine. And when she enters a strip of dense mining and explosions begin, they are almost invisible, but clearly audible.
— As usual, the most important thing is not the technique, but its application and those who apply it. We have already found out from experience that it is good to use the car in conjunction with a quadcopter, the calculation can be at a safe distance, the terrain is clearly visible, and sometimes mines are visible. Two people — the machine operator and the copter operator — work together, and it turns out amazingly," explains Anton.
Photo: IZVESTIA/Dmitry Astrakhan
Image source: iz.ru
At the same time, the maintenance and operation of the equipment is quite simple: it is made on the basis of a serial bulldozer with the installation of a more powerful engine. Fasteners and terminals for bulldozer equipment in the version of the sapper robot have also been preserved, and in two hours you can install the necessary and get a powerful and protected unmanned bulldozer.
— Mining of the territory took place for eight years. Both sides have a Soviet school, so it is very dense. There are a lot of foreign ammunition, a lot of remote mining, there are no maps of minefields, so everything is not easy," explains Anton.
Return to a peaceful life
After passing the next lane, the operator returns the robot back, and you can see it up close. This machine has already taken over the detonation of an anti-tank mine and a very large number of anti-personnel mines and homemade devices of various types. Traces of explosions are visible on the metal structures of the trawl and strikers. And on the protective visor there is a large number of fragments that he held.
Photo: IZVESTIA/Dmitry Astrakhan
Image source: iz.ru
— The machine is designed for continuous demining of the area, withstands all types of anti-personnel mines and anti-tank TM-62. You saw it in the last report, it's the same machine, and the working organ is the same. Only the protective visor was damaged, and now the designers are playing with its shape," Anton says about the case witnessed by Izvestia correspondents during the work of this robot with the sappers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the Avdeevsky direction. According to him, the designers are already working on improvements based on the results of testing the machine in the engineering units of the Russian army.
But the main thing is that unmanned systems do not just speed up the work of mine clearance teams, but reduce the danger to which people are exposed. We can clearly see the number of explosions under the working body of the machine, and if the mine clearance was carried out manually, then each of these mines would have to be detected and destroyed by sappers, at risk. Of course, after robotic technology, people always double-check the area, but the vast majority of dangers have already been eliminated by this point.
A local woman with a bucket of milk walks carefully along a dirt road past the robot, which is checked after work. Over the years of living in frontline areas, civilians get used to the safety rules, know where and how to move. It is clearly noticeable that the woman does not move away from the road, where there is no grass and the absence of mines is clearly visible. Over the years, such things become a habit.
Photo: IZVESTIA/Dmitry Astrakhan
Image source: iz.ru
— We have been afraid to even go there since 2014. We keep cows here, and we were even afraid that if the cow breaks away and runs, then that's it, there is no farm. And now they are clearing mines, you can not worry about your cattle and dogs, they run and explode all the time, — says Tatiana.
Active fighting in the area ended in 2022, in the first months of a special military operation. And the final complete mine clearance will allow residents to completely say goodbye to the long-term nightmare of the former frontline settlement.
Dmitry Astrakhan