Photo by Olena Dolzhenko | Olkhovka village, Kharkiv region. May 13, 2022 | The land was liberated from the Russian occupation troops.
After just a few weeks of the war, much of Ukraine was already littered with deadly unexploded ordnance and mines. A spokesman for the State Emergency Service said that 54,000 mines and unexploded ordnance — including almost 2,000 missiles — had been found and deactivated as of the end of May 2022. The thousands of remaining still-deadly munitions are a reminder that even in areas where the Kremlin’s forces have been pushed back, dangers remain — an obstacle for Ukrainians who want to return to their homes and to some semblance of normalcy.