Currently, Ukraine has a government program in place to compensate for the costs of demining, and 138 specialized companies have been certified. However, they are unable to clear all the land needed by farmers. At the same time, funding for humanitarian demining in the state budget has been cut for three consecutive years: 3 billion hryvnias in 2024, 2.5 billion hryvnias in 2025, and 1.7 billion hryvnias in 2026.
Farmers attribute the problem with official demining to the extremely lengthy procedures at every stage. It takes a month for the Humanitarian Demining Center to process an application from a farmer. Then there are up to three more months for the bidding process on Prozorro to select a demining company. The demining work itself drags on for another six months or more. For this reason, an entire market has emerged in the country, divided into two segments—the black and gray markets, according to LIGA.net.
“Official protocols are ideal for residential areas, but they slow down the return of large tracts of agricultural land to production,” note owners and managers of agricultural companies.
In addition, state-employed non-military bomb disposal experts are not authorized to work within 20 km of the combat zone or the border. This has created a large swath of “gray” land in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, as well as in the Kherson region, which is cultivated by local farmers. This is the territory where only black-market bomb disposal experts are hired to work.
The rate charged by underground deminers depends on the distance to the field and the amount of explosives—in the Chernihiv region, it starts at $800 per field. In the Sumy region, the services of illegal deminers are more expensive—starting at $1,000.
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