Oleksandr Lobov’s career as a military engineer has made him an international expert and taken him all over the world, from Afghanistan to Somalia.
He didn’t think that it would ever bring him home.
“I could never have supposed this would happen in Ukraine and I never could have imagined that my experience and my knowledge would be valuable in my own country,” he says.
Ukraine is now one of the world’s most heavily mine-contaminated countries. It’s estimated that about one third of the country has been exposed to war—an area four and a half times the size of Switzerland.
“People suffer because of mines and unexploded ordnance. A lot of people have died, adults and children,” Mr Lobov, UNDP Mine Action Analyst says. “It’s the highest casualty rate in the world. And we don’t know what level of contamination there will be in a few months.”
The task of making Ukraine safe will be time-consuming, complex, and very expensive—the World Bank estimates that a complete clearance of explosive ordnance will exceed US$37 billion.
“You’ve got landmines and unexploded ordnance in the ground over vast areas. You’ve got the abandoned ordnance littering the battlefield, and you’ve got ammunition depots and caches that have been hit and have thrown thousands of items of explosive ordnance around,” says Guy Rhodes, UNDP Mine Action Sub-Cluster Coordinator.
The Ukrainian government and its implementing arms, such as the State Emergency Service (SESU), are leading the unprecedented international response, as organizations flood in to help. Although the government has for decades been managing risks from unexploded ordnance from the world wars, the recent conflict represents another whole new level of difficulty in coordination, capacity gaps, and planning challenges.
“It’s off the scale compared to what the Ukrainian government was managing in the past, so they’ve called for international assistance, additional equipment and training,” Mr Rhodes says.
UNDP has received funding from the European Union, Croatia, Denmark, Japan, the UK and France to shore up the Ukraine government’s capacity to act.
UNDP has been working with Ukraine’s government for 30 years. It has led the UN’s mine action programme since 2016. It’s a lead partner supporting SESU, ensuring that a strengthening of operational and logistical backing through international funds and expertise translates to a more efficient response to the risks posed by explosive remnants of war.
"The UNDP's many years of experience in Ukraine and its operational capacity are vital in the context of our mine action strategy," says Roman Prymus, Deputy Head of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. “We are grateful for their strong international assistance.”
Two days a week, Mr Lobov gets in a car with a list of addresses and visits families whose homes have been destroyed. The work is dangerous and exhausting. Over and over he listens to stories of heartbreak and loss before he carefully goes over the property to determine whether it needs further intervention from emergency services, or debris removal can begin.
Debris removal is just one aspect of UNDP’s mine action response—and this conflict has already created debris enough to pave a road from Kyiv to Berlin just from 40 localities in Kyiv Oblast. The debris must also be processed and recycled and hazardous waste, such as asbestos, removed.
“Mine action is an enabler. It helps humanitarian access. It helps safe resettlement. It helps unblock land for agricultural use, it helps facilitate the safe rehabilitation of infrastructure, broader reconstruction and a return to normality. So, with finite resources, there is a need to ensure that efforts are initially targeted at the most important priorities,” Mr Rhodes says.
Accurate mapping is essential for this, and using satellites and drones, UNDP is producing detailed analysis of the scope and extent of the damage from the conflict. The information being fed into a national database.
“After conflict there is this massive uncertainty in the precise location of explosive ordnance contamination, so one of the first priorities is to better clarity the problem itself in order to plan operations in areas that will be most impactful,” Mr Rhodes says.
Even before this war, Ukraine cleared 80,000 pieces of explosive debris every year. And Mr Lobov knows how important it is to support a comprehensive long-term social and economic recovery, particularly in places where people have no choice but to take risks because they rely on forests for their food and income.
“They go to forest lands and a lot of accidents happen. When people don’t have any kind of alternative solution,” he says.
UNDP and its partners understand that there can be no short-term solutions.
“We’ve been here 30 years. We will support the national capacity for mine action and with a lot more equipment, training, and help, strengthen the backbone of response for now and for the future,” Mr Rhodes says.
© 2026 United Nations Development Programme
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