Grandfather-of-two Vitaliy Yarovyi sweeps a metal detector over the soil, listening for a high-pitched beep. When a signal is identified he places down a marker, then kneels and painstakingly rakes through the dirt with a brush and magnet, searching for metal fragments.
Vitaliy, 57, is one of The Halo Trust’s courageous deminers who are working across war-ravaged regions of to find and remove deadly landmines and unexploded ordnance.
The charity has rapidly grown from around 400 staff members in the country before to more than 1,500 today.
The Express travelled to Kharkiv in eastern – where daily bombardment continues – to witness Halo’s efforts to make vast swathes of land once occupied by forces safe again.
Vitaliy worked as a thermal power plant engineer before his station in Severodonetsk was shelled and destroyed. He had been a deminer since April.
Vitaliy wants the region to be safe again for his granddaughters (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
He said: “My daughter received the [job] offer first, but our family decided I should be the one to do it if my health allows.
“I have two granddaughters living in Kharkiv and I want them to run around a free land, not this hazardous area that we have been left with.”
The field around Vitaliy was a hive of activity, with a dozen other deminers working on sections of land under the scorching sun. All wore protective Kevlar vests and visors which must only be removed during short breaks signalled by whistle blasts.
About an hour’s drive from Kharkiv city, the area – which we are not naming to protect Halo’s staff – was under Russian occupation for six months before its liberation in September 2022.
The invaders used nearby tree lines for defensive positions and to launch shells towards the city, and left the land contaminated with anti-tank mines, unexploded ordnance, grenades and anti-personnel mines – some of which were rigged with tripwires.
Vitaliy, whose 35-year-old son is away defending his country, described a nearby village that was once “prosperous and beautiful” but was torn apart by fierce fighting and left heavily mined.
He added: “I’m sure that life will go back there once we have demined and cleared the whole area. I find this job amazingly rewarding and morally satisfying to clear the land and give it back to people.
Trainee Halo Trust deminers hoped to make the land safe for civilians again (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
“I hope that with the help of our international friends, we’ll be able to clear this area and bring life back here.”
A system of painted sticks was used to mark areas around the site. The most important one to remember was the red and white striped stick indicating the edge of the danger zone.
Halo’s work begins when a threat is reported, often by locals who have spotted remnants of war or after an incident where a person or animal is injured.
Non-technical survey teams are deployed to gather information about the type of threats and terrain, which is used to decide the boundaries of each clearance task and the methods that will be used.
The plan is adapted as teams work and drones may also be used to survey the land, taking high resolution images which are magnified and examined at Halo’s Kharkiv office.
Vitaliy’s work is an example of manual clearance, where deminers methodically use detectors and toolkits to search for signals and excavate a maximum of 5cm of earth at a time. If they find something, an explosive ordnance disposal team will move in.
At another location, a mechanical clearance team was using a remote controlled excavator which could be operated from behind a protective shield at a safe distance of up to 300m.
Deminers practice techniques at a training ground before going into the field (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
A bucket on the digger’s arm sifted through the soil, leaving behind only larger lumps of dirt and metal to be checked. The excavator can clear up to 60 square metres per day, compared to around two square metres for a single person using manual methods.
Ex-British soldier Steve Wallis, Halo’s regional operation manager for Kharkiv, said the main threats to human life in the region were TM-62 plastic mines and OZM bounding mines.
He explained: “They come up to about a metre and fire shrapnel 360 degrees around them. They’re the killer really. Some of the other mines it’s lower limb injuries but this, if you’re close enough, it’s fatal.”
Steve served in the Army for 23 years, leaving as a sergeant in the Parachute Regiment in 2004. He then worked as a community paramedic with Dorset ambulance service and as a chemical weapons inspector in Syria before arriving in in September 2022.
The veteran said the situation in was unique because it is the only place where Halo is deployed during an active conflict. Steve added: “I’m an ex-soldier and I understood what things would look like, but when you come here and see it…
Halo teams survey the land to identify threats left behind after conflict (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
“You go to small villages and they’re just completely surrounded by minefields and other explosive ordnance. People still try to carry out their normal daily lives as much as they can, but they’re at risk.”
Around 42,000 square kilometres of land in the Kharkiv region was occupied by Russian forces early in the war. Halo has surveyed around 13,000 square kilometres that managed to take back.
Of that area, around 850,000 square metres have been demined, leading to the discovery of more than 2,875 anti-vehicle mines, 353 anti-personnel mines, 4,600 pieces of unexploded or abandoned ordnance and 2,330 items of small arms ammunition.
Many deminers we spoke to said they felt honoured to be contributing to the war effort by making land safe again for civilians.
Steve said: “We’ve already seen it. One of our bigger towns, when I first visited back in November there were very few people living there. There was no power, water had been brought in on tankers and they were having to fill up 5L bottles just to flush the toilet.
“Now when you go there, it’s a thriving community. It doesn’t have the numbers that it did previously, but people are coming back, they’re opening shops, cafes and restaurants.”