JTB_Kherson_sappers_day_1_043
Anton pushes the charge button to detonate a cluster submunition behind a war destroyed home in the village of Posad-Pikrovsâke, where the Luhansk sappers of Ukraineâs State Emergency Services have been working for three months clearing cluster submunitions. The village, approximately one kilometer from where Russian forces previously occupied Kherson Oblast, was once the gray zone between Ukrainian forces and Russian occupiers. During the heavy fighting, Russian forces fired Soviet SMERCH missiles, 300-mm rockets (9N139) with a cluster warhead containing fragmentation submunitions designed to destroy unarmored vehicles and manpower in their concentration areas. Each missile releases 600 cluster submunitions into the air, which are lethal to the Ukrainian soldiers retaking their territory and are extremely hard to detect in the brush by the eye. They continue to be a cause of death to civilians (who sometimes pick them up, unaware of the danger) and animals. Romanâs sapper team of five have already cleared over 1000 clusters from the small area. They work seven days a week in Kherson Oblast, clearing anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines, unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive traps in the fields and in the homes of civilians left behind by the Russian occupiers. Posad-Pikrovsâke, Kherson Oblast, Ukraine, March 8, 2023.