Sowing must begin, but the fields are littered with Russian shells. In desperation, Vitali Sydor, a farmer in southern Ukraine, turns himself into a minesweeper, using a metal detector to look for ammunition contaminating his land.
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“I bought some metal detectors and did a bit of online research,” says the 28-year-old, who admits he doesn’t have any safety equipment and relied on the advice of a friend who was in the army.
With the Russian invasion, Novogrygorivka, his village in the southern Mykolaiv region, was in the sights of Russian soldiers bombarding the area for nine months until their retreat southward in November 2022 in the face of attacks from a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Here shredded trees, destroyed houses and charred car corpses populate the landscape. The house that Mr. Sydor’s father and grandfather built is in ruins.
“Everywhere you look, holes,” says the farmer.
He must now sow his fields, the famous and fertile Ukrainian land. His survival and that of his family is all the more urgent now that the entire harvest of last year, that of the invasion, has been lost.
Photo Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP
pull a rope
When international organizations, police and army come with their pioneers to clear land, the scale of the work to be done is so great that some farmers who cannot wait start it themselves.
“The waiting time can be very long and nobody knows when they will come to demining,” explains Vitali Sydor.
About half of the agricultural land in the Mykolayiv region was unusable this year because of “contamination or risk of contamination” from explosives, says Jasmine Dann of the Halo Trust, a mine clearance organization.
She considers Mr Sydor’s decision to act on his own to be “very dangerous”.
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“There is a risk of missing something, but also that of trapped mines,” explains Jasmine Dann, specifying that certain explosives “are very unstable and explode when handled”.
The land in the area is polluted with anti-vehicle and anti-personnel mines and large quantities of artillery ammunition.
“The fields are covered with exploded and unexploded shells,” notes Mr. Sydor as he pulls a piece of shrapnel from his foot.
Photo Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP
Vitaly Sydor
He says to test if a grenade poses a risk, he and his workers tie a long rope to it. “We lie down, we fire the projectile and when it explodes, well, it explodes,” says the farmer.
What really scares him and his colleagues are plastic landmines “because metal detectors don’t detect them”.
About 100 hectares of barley were grown on the farm that he runs with his parents, says Mr. Sydor and shows the green branches growing out of the ground.
“Of course it was scary! It was the first field that we cleared ourselves,” he says.
“There are mines on parachutes, wired mines (…) there are huge amounts of pieces of rockets,” he enumerates. “Sometimes a rocket is planted so deep in the ground that even a tractor cannot remove it.”
The young farmer also plants a red pennant wherever he suspects danger on his land.
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Everything turns green
In the village of Yevguenivka, the NGO Halo Trust is clearing a field in the center of which is a pile of rusty metal, the remains of a Russian truck destroyed by a Ukrainian helicopter in March 2022.
The vehicle was filled with ammunition – grenades, rockets and others – which were thrown 100 meters. Some exploded, some didn’t.
Two teams from Halo Trust slowly walk through the field, metal detectors in hand, covering every square meter twice, a “slow and methodical” approach that allows the organization to ensure the area is safe and usable.
Vadym Belyk, the boss of the agricultural company that wants to exploit these lands, is there. “We are like ants: (the Russians) destroy and we rebuilt everything”.
Jasmine Dann understands the impatience of farmers like Vitali Sydor in the middle of sowing. “Farmland is our number one priority,” she says.
Mr. Sydor is pleased that he was able to plant his barley and hopes to start growing sunflowers. “In ten days we won’t see the earth anymore, everything will be green,” he says happily in advance.