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Our Work Amplified: Ukrainian Women Deminers Trained by MAT Kosovo Featured on Taz and Reporterre
We are proud to share two impactful articles by Isabelle de Pommereau published on taz.de and reporterre.net, highlighting the incredible stories of Ukrainian women deminers. These brave individuals are not only dismantling landmines but also challenging traditional gender roles while rebuilding their war-torn communities.
Original Article by Isabelle de Pommereau | reporterre.net – January 3, 2025
[Read the original article]
From baristas to mine clearers: the heroines who are freeing Ukraine from mines
The liberated territories of Ukraine have a huge need for deminers. Many women are taking on this task and are receiving training in Kosovo, a country renowned for its expertise in this field.
At the foot of the mountains bordering Montenegro and Albania, twenty-four Ukrainian deminers, mostly women, surround a Soviet FAB 500 bomb. Rusty but still lethal, it embodies the immensity of the challenge: with nearly 30 % of its territory polluted by unexploded ordnance, Ukraine is today the most mined country in the world, according to NATO. Although the war still rages in the east and south of the country, the demining of the territories liberated from Russian forces since 2022 is already crucial, to make the ” breadbasket of Europe “ livable and arable again .
Far from the battlefields, it is in Kosovo that many Ukrainians come to train. This country of the former Yugoslavia remained littered with mines after the war of 1998-1999. Humanitarian demining organizations have since settled there, transforming Peja, in the west of the country, into a center of expertise in this field.
Historically male domain
These sixteen Ukrainian women left their jobs — barista, entrepreneur, programmer or environmentalist — and share a colossal mission: to clear the liberated areas of their country of bombs, grenades and other explosive remnants, to allow families to return and farmers to restart their harvests. After initial training on the ground in Ukraine, they were chosen to follow in-depth training in Kosovo, which will allow them to take on more responsibilities, particularly by leading teams.
In this historically male-dominated field, female deminers train at the Mine Action & Training ( MAT ) center, honing a skill that is vital to the Ukrainian and global economy. The work is daunting: it will take decades to rid Ukraine of its war relics.
Founded in 2010 by a former British soldier, MAT Kosovo has established itself as a global reference in humanitarian demining. Trainees from 170 countries learn to identify and neutralize explosive devices according to the most rigorous international standards. Since the Russian invasion, two non-profit foundations, Jersey Overseas and Mriya, have funded the training of these 487 Ukrainians, including 87 women, at a cost of €6,000 for five weeks. Upon their return, these graduates immediately return to the war zone.
” A mine does not distinguish between a man and a woman “
On this autumn morning at the training ground, Stew Burgess, a veteran of Britain’s Royal Air Force, points to a tiny detonator buried in the 500kg FAB bomb. ” That’s the part that goes ‘bang.’ The rest is just mass , “ he explains.
At his side, Anastasiia Minchukova, 23, translates. Rejected for a combat position in February 2022, she is one of eight women who volunteered for mine clearance training in Peja as soon as it opened to women in April 2022. Until then, mine clearance was one of about a hundred professions considered “ dangerous for women’s reproductive health . ” “ A mine does not distinguish between a man and a woman. Ukraine cannot deprive itself of half its forces , ” she says.
Like her, Nika Kokareva, 40, listens attentively. A team leader in her native region of Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, she has been clearing mines from a sunflower field for six months, sometimes advancing a metre a day. “ We still have ten or twenty years of work ahead of us , ” she confides.
” Demining Ukraine will not take years, or decades, but an eternity “
For Kosovar instructor Artur Tigani, the first Ukrainian trainees brought back painful memories. “ It was like a mirror to my past , ” says the former Kosovo Liberation Army fighter. After war ravaged his hometown of Peja, humanitarian demining helped him rebuild his life.
Since then, he has trained deminers in conflict zones from Mozambique to Syria. But Ukraine represents an unprecedented scale: millions of unexploded ordnance — often obsolete Soviet munitions — litter fields, streets and playgrounds. “ Demining Ukraine will not take years, or decades, but an eternity , ” he predicts. Faced with the immensity of the task, his mission is clear: “ Provide elite training. ”
” The men are at the front, the women are clearing mines “
For many, mine clearance is more than a job, it is a path to resilience. Giulnara Makarets, 50, found a purpose after fleeing Russian occupation in Donetsk in 2014 and Mariupol in 2022. Veronica Mykhailova, 20, left her job as a barista to clear mines in the fields of Kharkiv, despite her mother’s pleas. “ Men are at the front, women are clearing mines , ” she sums up pragmatically.
Oksana Omelchuk, a 35-year-old environmentalist, sees mine clearance as a way to reconnect with her calling. When bombings interrupted her work in national parks, she turned to a new mission: “ How can you convince people to preserve nature when they’ve lost everything ? ” In Peja, she’s perfecting techniques to limit the impact of explosions on ecosystems, combining biodiversity protection with reconstruction .
The industry is changing rapidly, as Iryna Kustovska, operations manager for the Ukrainian Deminers Association, observes. A former drone specialist in the Civil Aviation Administration, she retrained after the Russian invasion. In Peja, she rose through the ranks to become the first woman to graduate from the MAT ’s most advanced course , reserved for international experts and military personnel. Today, as a quality control engineer for Demining Solutions — one of Ukraine’s first private demining companies — she is a revolution in an industry where women now hold a third of the 4,000 positions.
A job for generations
In his country, mines kill daily. On the door of their classroom, a poignant tribute bears witness to this: “ Dmytro (Dima) Yershov, 30.01.1992 – 03.12.2023. ” This former surfer and MAT graduate died as a result of an accident caused by an anti-tank mine near Izium, two weeks before the birth of his first child. Like him, nearly 1,000 Ukrainians have lost their lives since the beginning of the war because of mines.
After an intense week of training, Nika Kokareva collapses from exhaustion. “ This course is a unique opportunity. I have no right to fail ,” she confides. “ I have to finish clearing mines from the fields near my home. It’s vital. Then I’ll head east. ”
Before the war, she led a very different life, working in luxury hotels and scuba diving in Egypt and Cambodia. As she approached her 40th birthday, she decided to return to Mykolaiv, to be closer to her mother and brother, dreaming of a more stable life. But the war swept away her plans.
She fled briefly to Poland, but soon returned, determined: “ I didn’t want to be a refugee . ” When she returned, she was confronted with scenes of horror: destroyed villages, starving stray dogs, terrified residents locked in their homes or surviving in deserted hamlets. The loss of life and animals caused by mines left a deep impression on her, especially when residents were killed while gathering wood or pets were blown up on machines. But being overwhelmed by grief “ takes too much energy , ” she concludes. She chose action and trained in mine clearance. “ I like risk and adventure. I wanted to be on the ground. ”
” Farmers can’t wait any longer “
Back in Ukraine, Nika Kokareva knows that her mission will go beyond the current war: ” The work we are doing today, our grandchildren and their grandchildren will have to continue. “
The urgency is palpable: in Mykolaiv, the imminent arrival of snow will make an already exhausting task almost impossible. “ The fields must be cleared of mines before it is too late. Farmers cannot wait any longer , ” she insists. Some are already taking insane risks by working in still-contaminated areas, putting their lives at risk to sow or harvest.
One memory remains etched in Nika’s mind: her first demolition in Peja. ” Destroying these machines of death is an incredible feeling . “ For her, each controlled explosion, each neutralized device, represents much more than a simple technical achievement: a step towards freedom and the reconstruction of her country.
Original Article by Isabelle de Pommereau | taz.de – January 6, 2025
[Read the original article]
Liberating the War Zones
Over 1,300 Ukrainian women work as mine clearers at home. Many of them train for this at a school in Kosovo. A site visit.
Picture taken May 31, 2022. REUTERS/Laura Hasani
On a clear, cool afternoon, 24 Ukrainians gather around a rusty Soviet-made bomb. It is a FAB-500 and it lies on a barren training field with the high peaks of Montenegro and Albania on the horizon. While the war rages on at home, here mostly women are preparing for a different fight. They will clear the deadly legacy of the withdrawing Russian troops. These dangers – mines, unexploded bombs, artillery shells – lurk in Ukraine between fields, on roadsides and in the rubble of destroyed cities.
The scale of this mission is unprecedented, say international experts. In almost three years of war, landmines have turned large parts of Ukraine into unpredictable terrain. According to the United Nations, it is currently the most heavily mined country in the world.
The women who have gathered here in the field in Kosovo – by profession they are, for example, baristas, managers, mothers, beauticians, environmental activists, software developers or students – they all want to make their homeland safe again, and the fields arable again. Ukraine is considered the breadbasket of the world, and agriculture is an important economic factor.
In Ukraine, the women, who have already completed basic training in mine clearance at home and work for various clearance services, spend their days wandering through bombed fields and once-occupied villages. These are places full of hidden dangers. The volunteers are pioneers in a profession that until recently was not allowed for women. Here, at the Mine Action & Training Center (MAT) Kosovo (see info box) in Peja, they want to train to become experts. The school trains deminers from all over the world, but since the Russian invasion of Ukraine there has been a special focus on Ukraine. International donations have so far funded the training of 436 Ukrainians.
This afternoon, the women are learning how to defuse a “full load”: a 500-kilogram bomb, such as those often found in the fields of Ukraine. Instructor Stew Burgess, a former British Air Force weapons specialist, points out the smallest but deadliest component of the bomb: the detonator. “That’s the only part that explodes,” he explains. Everything else is just the propulsion system and the payload. Some detonators are booby-trapped, others are extremely unstable and ready to detonate at the slightest movement.
“A mine doesn’t care if you are a man or a woman. We need everyone who is willing and able. Ukraine cannot afford to ignore its women”
Anastasiia Minchukovaz, translator MAT
“You have to find the detonator and remove it,” says Burgess. Next to him, 23-year-old Anastasiia Minchukova, a former linguistics student, translates his words into Ukrainian. In April 2022, she was one of the first eight Ukrainian women to be trained as mine clearers in Peja. Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, she knew that “when I grow up, I will have no choice: I will have to fight.” But when the war broke out, she was denied a role on the front lines because of her age. “A mine doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman. We need everyone who is willing and able. Ukraine cannot afford to overlook its women,” says Minchukova.
Nika Kokareva, 40, listens attentively to instructor Burgess. For the past six months, she has been leading a team clearing a huge sunflower field near the front line in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine. Her work – methodically searching the ground with a large metal detector and sometimes a specially trained dog – is arduous. The international humanitarian organization she is working for, MAG (Mine Advisory Group), like most other NGOs working to clear the country of landmines, unexploded ordnance and other dangerous remnants of war – does not have a license to defuse explosives on its own.
That is in the hands of state authorities. That is why Nika relies on the State Emergency Service of Ukraine when she finds dangerous things. But at MAT Kosovo she is being trained to be able to do the defusing work herself. “I want to practice, learn how to remove the detonator, carry out an explosion, decide whether an explosive can be moved safely or not,” she says. “That’s why I’m here: we still have ten, twenty years of work ahead of us.”
The training of the women at MAT Kosovo combines theory and practice and leads to an internationally recognized certification. Real demining scenarios are simulated on the school’s premises, which are housed in a former villa and in container buildings and also have a canteen and dormitories. There are minefields and tanks, and a city backdrop has been set up for simulation. “Without the Kosovo War, this school would not exist,” says headmaster John Doone, a former British soldier.
In 1999, attacks by Serbian troops on Albanian separatists and the subsequent NATO air strikes left numerous mines and many unexploded bombs in Kosovo. Humanitarian organizations flocked to the region and turned Peja into a center for mine clearance expertise. Founded in 2010 by former British soldier Ben Remfrey, MAT Kosovo has trained thousands of people from over 100 countries. They often come from conflict areas such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya and Iraq. MAT Kosovo adheres to the “International Mine Action Standards” in its training, the globally recognized standards for humanitarian mine clearance operations, assures Doone. And: “We don’t just do theory: we use explosives and advanced techniques to blow up and render harmless various dangerous types of munitions.”
NGOs cover training costs
The return of war to Europe with the Russian invasion of Ukraine broadened the school’s focus. Even before fighting broke out in 2022, school founder and executive director Remfrey had been advising Ukrainian authorities on training deminers in the east of the country. After the Russian invasion, he convinced Ukrainian authorities to include women in demining. He pledged financial support and invited the first group of eight women to a special course.
By the end of 2024, around 400 Ukrainians, including 85 women, will have been trained in Peja – 187 this year alone. An “all-inclusive” four-week course normally costs around 6,000 euros. Ukrainians have to pay significantly less because two NGOs cover most of the training costs.
This week there are 58 participants, including a group of Qatari police and a British war photographer. But the Ukrainian participants are the only ones who will return to an active war zone after their training.
Monday morning. In a container classroom, the instructor discusses the schedule until the final exams. “From now on, the pressure will be high,” says Stew Burgess, preparing the class for theoretical and practical tests. They will have to answer multiple-choice questions about identifying explosives: when is it safe to remove munitions, when not? At a remote training demolition site, they will disarm a bomb in a building by only detonating the detonator – instead of blowing up the bomb itself and destroying the entire building.
A key test will be the “spot task,” where everyone must defuse an explosive that poses an immediate threat. “You can’t fail the ‘spot task’ or you could pose a danger to yourself and others,” Burgess insists.
At nine o’clock, the Ukrainian training groups observe a minute’s silence for those who lost their lives in the Ukrainian war. Then Iryna (who wishes to remain anonymous), a tall woman with a broad smile, presents her presentation – instructors had laid out a minefield for the participants in the nearby mountains.
The task: to create the most accurate risk analysis possible. The group had a day to explore the area, looking for raised earth, broken branches and animal tracks. The instructors took on the role of locals, and the participants were tasked with asking them about the area. They also had to show how they analyse prepared maps of the area.
The instructor insists on accuracy. How many square metres can be cleaned per day? How long exactly will the clean-up work take? Sometimes only a few square metres can be cleaned, but usually between five and 15 per day. “The landowner,” Burgess warns, “wants his land back; an incorrect estimate is not enough.”
Iryna, 40, who comes from Cherniv, near the border with Belarus and Russia, takes the challenge seriously. “Fear doesn’t deter me,” she says later. “My whole life has been about overcoming obstacles.” Before the war, she ran an elevator repair business in Kyiv – until Russian bombings made everything more difficult. “Repairing elevators was the last thing anyone was interested in when there was no electricity or water.”
During the coffee break, the trainees gather outside. For many women, this mission is deeply personal. Giulnara Makarets, at 50, is the oldest in the seminar. She joined the mine clearance service after fleeing Russian-occupied Donetsk in 2014 and then again from Mariupol in 2022. Veronica Mykhailova, the youngest of the group at 20, swapped a barista job in Kyiv for demining fields in Kharkiv – despite her mother’s urgent pleas not to do so. “The men are on the front lines, the women are clearing mines. We are all doing our part.” Natalia Myronenko, 40 and mother of two, says: “Women set the tone for what is to come. We have to think about the world our children will inherit.”
Finding a Calling
Nadia Chygrina, 29, who is currently far away from her seven-year-old daughter in Brovary near Kyiv, has given up her job as a beautician. “My family is proud,” she says. Oksana Omelchuk, who worked for an environmental NGO before the war, turned to mine clearance when bombing made field work impossible. “It’s really difficult to convince someone to protect nature when people are dying, losing their homes and jobs,” says the 35-year-old, who now also works for the Mine Advisory Group (MAG). She sees clearing farmland near Mykolaiv as an opportunity to “do socially important work.”
Lunch is served in the school’s main building. The trainees eat in silence, often scrolling through their cell phones. Svitlana Nagorna’s phone vibrates; back home in Ukraine, there is another air raid siren. “There is no break from the war,” she says. Her family lives near Kyiv. She heads a team at the Ukrainian Deminers’ Association, an NGO, that investigates whether and to what extent land near Mykolaiv is contaminated. The job comes with enormous responsibility, she says: “If I sign a report that an area is safe, it’s my fault if something goes wrong.”
She saw the devastation in Ukraine up close. Impressions from villages like Ternovi Pody and Liubomyrivka, which were occupied by the Russians, still haunt her. As they retreated, the Russians laid booby traps in people’s houses. And yet, the villagers, who “had lost everything, including their roof over their heads,” were optimistic despite everything, says Nagorna.
She used to dream of a career in television. But at some point after the Russian invasion, her job at a broadcaster no longer felt right. An advertisement for a job in mine detection caught her eye. Nagorna responded. “They called me within 15 minutes,” she remembers. “I knew it was dangerous, but also that they would train me.” Only her sister supported her decision, but Nagorna says she has found her calling. The training in Peja, she says, will help her to better assess the security of villages and handle explosives.
Women make up about a third of the approximately 4,000 humanitarian deminers in Ukraine. “There will be many jobs for them, not only as deminers, but also in leadership and management,” says Iryna Kustovska, who works for Demining Solution, a private demining company that works with international NGOs. “Unfortunately, humanitarian demining will have to remain a priority for decades to come.”
Artur Tigani is an instructor at MAT Kosovo. As a former fighter in the Kosovo Liberation Army, Tigani had seen his country devastated. At the end of the war, his hometown of Peja was in ruins, littered with unexploded ordnance. Tigani went to MAT Kosovo and worked as a trainer in Rwanda, Syria and Iraq. But what he saw in Ukraine surpassed anything he had ever experienced, he says: “There is no point in talking about the evacuation of Ukraine in days, years or decades,” he says. “It will take forever.” The United Nations estimates that a third of Ukraine is now contaminated.
Even in Kosovo, explosives are still being found today after the 77-day NATO bombardment 25 years ago – Western countries are now subsidizing mine clearance. But Ukraine is 55 times larger than Kosovo. In addition to landmines, another problem is old, poorly maintained Soviet ammunition, which often fails to explode. “There are millions of unexploded ordnance scattered across playgrounds, streets and fields,” says Tigani.
December. Nika Kokareva is now back in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, weeks after successfully completing her course in Kosovo. She has obtained her certificate. Now winter is approaching. The snow will make her work even more difficult. And after winter comes spring: “We have to get the fields ready – the farmers are waiting.” Sometimes, she adds, a desperate farmer will risk working a field that has not yet been completely cleared. “That is life-threatening.”
One memory from Peja has stuck with Nika Kokareva in particular. It’s the first time she defused a mortar. It was both exciting and satisfying for her: “There is something rewarding about destroying the terrible things that kill people.”
