According to preliminary estimates, almost 13,500 square kilometers of Ukraine’s seas and inland waters require humanitarian demining, of which 7,300 km² are in the already de-occupied territories, said Colonel Serhii Reva, head of the Humanitarian Demining Department of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SES), at a briefing at the Military Media Center on 30 May.
According to him, the areas such as rivers, reservoirs, water bodies, and the Black and Azov Seas are being or to be surveyed. SES divers have examined nearly 3,200 hectares (32 km²) of water bodies and successfully cleared 1,400 explosive devices.
Serhii Reva announced that the SES currently operates with 22 units and utilizes state-of-the-art equipment, such as surface and underwater Sonobot and Chaisin drones, to enhance their operational effectiveness.
“Today, this equipment, along with other sonars and echo-ranging systems, is used to survey the Dnipro River in Zaporizhzhia oblast, the Kyiv Reservoir, rivers and lakes in Kyiv and Chernihiv Oblasts,” the SES representative added.
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