The Ukrainian agricultural holding Nibulon became an operator of the demining action and received the first certificate for humanitarian demining operations.
The company reported on Facebook that Nibulon received a Certificate from the Center for Mine Action of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine for the non-technical survey of territories.
Nibulon is one of the largest Ukrainian agricultural producers and exporters. The company was founded in Mykolaiv in 1991. The size of the holding’s investments in the economy of Ukraine in 2021 amounted to more than $2.3 billion.
Now, Nibulon sappers have the right to conduct reconnaissance of the company’s territories, which are potentially contaminated with explosives and mines, and assess the degree of their contamination, narrowing the scope of the search as much as possible.
The company says this is the first step towards demining Ukrainian lands, including its native Mykolaiv region in Ukraine’s south, which was severely affected by Russian shelling and mining. Nibulon has already submitted documents for obtaining the following certificates. In particular:
- for the technical survey of territories,
- demining by hand,
- examination of the area of hostilities.
In difficult demining cases, Nibulon experts will support sappers of the State Emergency Service and the Ministry of Defense to dispose of explosive objects.
According to the estimates by Serhii Kruk, who heads Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, about 30% of Ukrainian territory is currently mined. That equals about two areas of Austria, he said.
Kruk said that the de-occupied territories in the southern Kherson and Mykolaiv regions are actively being cleared of explosive objects. More than 8,000 square kilometers are subject to demining. Of them, about 7,000 square kilometers are the territory of the Kherson region, and up to 1.5 thousand is the Mykolaiv region.