Russia's formidable minefields are 'insane' to navigate, with as many as 5 mines per square meter, Ukrainian official says

• Ukraine's counteroffensive to drive back Russia is encountering serious challenges.
• A Ukrainian official said Russia had laid 5 mines per square meter in some regions.

Ukrainian forces are encountering heavily-defended Russian positions and fields with up to five mines per square meter as they move forward with their counteroffensive, a Ukrainian official says.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, described the density of the Russian mining as "insane" in televised remarks Wednesday.

"The main task for us is to save the lives of our people at the front. We have to understand that the enemy has prepared for these events very well, with a huge number of territories mined," he said, according to a report by CNN.

"On average, there are 3-4-5 mines per square meter. Imagine how difficult the work is to remove them to allow our military to move afterwards."

He added: "If earlier there were hopes that this could be done with the help of equipment provided by our partners, today our units are doing a very difficult job on foot in many parts of the frontline at night."

Previous reports have described how Western tanks and mine-clearing technology have not been able to secure Ukrainian units a breakthrough, so units are resorting to trying to clear minefields slowly by hand.

"Normally our rollers can withstand up to four explosions," tank commander Maksym told the BBC last week.

"It's very hard because there are too many mines," he said, adding that Russians had been laying mines on top of each other to destroy Western tanks.

The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, DC, said in its daily update on the conflict on Thursday that Ukrainian forces advanced up to 650m into Russian defenses along a 1.5km front in the Melitopol direction in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukraine launched its counteroffensive earlier in the summer, aiming to punch a hole through Russian defensive lines using tactics taught by Western allies and expensive weapons they'd provided. But having had months to dig in and fortify positions in east and south Ukraine they occupy, Russian defenders are proving difficult to break down.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Ukrainian units were abandoning the aggressive tactics they were trained by Western allies to deploy in the offensive, and were instead resorting to seeking to wear Russia down with artillery and missile barrages and advances by smaller units.