The Pivotal Mission in Ukraine’s Counteroffensive: Hunting for Mines

livemint.com:

The Ukrainian soldiers set off in pitch black, stealing through shell-cratered fields to carry out one of the most important tasks of the counteroffensive—and one of the most dangerous. Armed with a metal detector, a shovel and a grappling hook, the combat engineers—known as sappers—hunt for mines along the front line with Russian forces, while trying to remain undetected by the enemy nearby.

“You can’t afford to be nervous," said a 49-year-old sapper with the call sign Fisherman who leads a group of 50 within Ukraine’s 68th Jaeger Brigade. After an initial thrust using Western-donated tanks and other armored vehicles foundered in a Russian minefield in early June, Ukrainian forces turned to men like Fisherman to clear a way forward.

Russia built some of the most extensive battlefield fortifications seen since the World Wars during the months that Western forces were training and equipping Kyiv’s forces to go on the offensive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lamented that Western allies didn’t move faster, giving Russia time to mine an area larger than California.

Despite the challenge, Ukraine has clawed back more territory since the start of the counteroffensive more than six weeks ago than Russia seized over the same number of months. And Kyiv has yet to throw all its forces into battle, keeping back some Western-trained units to exploit any breach in Russia’s defenses.

But progress has been slower than Ukrainian and Western officials had hoped for, and Russia’s main line of defenses still lies ahead—beyond fields studded with both antitank and antipersonnel mines, concrete reinforced trenches, wire entanglements, dragon’s teeth and antitank ditches. Engineering has proved to be one of the stronger