- A Ukrainian commander criticized Western mine clearing equipment.
- He told The Washington Post it was noisy and ineffective and could be blown up.
Mine-clearing equipment given to Ukrainian forces by the West is "ineffective" because it is noisy, large, and easy to strike, according to a commander speaking The Washington Post.
Officers told the publication that the Ukrainian military had encountered minefields between three and ten miles deep, laid with anti-tank and tripwired anti-personnel mines, in their counteroffensive to drive back Russian forces.
They said that Russian forces had been able to attack specialized minefield-clearing equipment provided to Ukraine by its Western allies, meaning that fields were being cleared by hand by specialist units.
One commander, identified by his call sign 'Oskar,' told the outlet that his unit of the 47th Mechanized Brigade had success before Ukraine launched its counteroffensive using German-made Wisent mine-clearance tanks to clear minefields in the Zaporizhzhia region.
"But now their use is already ineffective, because the enemy expects the appearance of such equipment, which is massive, which is noisy, which is easy to see and, accordingly, to strike," Oskar said.
Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's military chief, told the Post that Ukrainian forces needed more specialist mine-clearing equipment.
"We need special equipment, we need special remote mine-clearance equipment," Zaluzhny said, adding of US-provided M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge systems that "they are also being destroyed, yes. There's nothing wrong with that. It takes a lot of them."
A Ukrainian official told the Post that it had only received around 15% of the specialist de-mining equipment it had requested from Western allies. A US official responded that it would provide all the equipment requested, but there were problems providing it on the scale requested in a timely way.
Ukraine launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive in June, seeking to drive Russian forces back from territory it occupies in south and east Ukraine.
So far Ukraine has made limited advances, with Russian forces having dug heavily fortified positions protected by landmines during the winter.