Isabel Coles
BAHATYR, Ukraine—The Ukrainian soldiers set off in pitch black, stealing through shell-cratered fields to carry out one of the most important tasks of the counteroffensive—and one of the most dangerous.
Armed with a metal detector, a shovel and a grappling hook, the combat engineers—known as sappers—hunt for mines along the front line with Russian forces, while trying to remain undetected by the enemy nearby.
“You can’t afford to be nervous,” said a 49-year-old sapper with the call sign Fisherman who leads a group of 50 within Ukraine’s 68th Jaeger Brigade.
After an initial thrust using Western-donated tanks and other armored vehicles foundered in a Russian minefield in early June, Ukrainian forces turned to men like Fisherman to clear a way forward.
Russia built some of the most extensive battlefield fortifications seen since the World Wars during the months that Western forces were training and equipping Kyiv’s forces to go on the offensive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lamented that Western allies didn’t move faster, giving Russia time to mine an area larger than California.
‘You can’t afford to be nervous,’ says Fisherman, a 49-year-old sapper.
Despite the challenge, Ukraine has clawed back more territory since the start of the counteroffensive more than six weeks ago than Russia seized over the same number of months. And Kyiv has yet to throw all its forces into battle, keeping back some Western-trained units to exploit any breach in Russia’s defenses.
But progress has been slower than Ukrainian and Western officials had hoped for, and Russia’s main line of defenses still lies ahead—beyond fields studded with both antitank and antipersonnel mines, concrete reinforced trenches, wire entanglements, dragon’s teeth and antitank ditches.
Engineering has proved to be one of the stronger branches of the Russian military, the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute think tank said in a report earlier this year. Obstacles including mines are designed to slow Ukrainian forces down and channel advancing infantry into positions where Russian attack helicopters, artillery and drones can pick them off.
A Russian manual dated 2023 and obtained by a Ukrainian military officer set out guidelines for using mines to thwart Ukrainian mechanized columns. Some antitank mines are to be laid without camouflage to divert Ukrainian forces into areas where hidden mines are placed. Others should be planted in clusters beside obstacles such as disabled vehicles and destroyed tracts of road to ensnare Ukrainian forces attempting to bypass them.
Mine-clearing equipment was included in a $60 million package of military aid the U.S. provided to Ukraine last year.
A wounded Ukrainian soldier is carried on a stretcher after stepping on a landmine near Pokrovske, Ukraine.
Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
Among the solutions are the Mine Clearing Line Charge, which launches a small rocket with a line of explosive charges across a minefield and is detonated to trigger any mines nearby. Ukraine already has a Soviet-developed equivalent.
One of the six Leopard 2R armored mine-clearing vehicles provided to Ukraine by Finland was destroyed in the early days of the counteroffensive and two were damaged, according to Oryx, an independent team of analysts tracking both sides’ losses in the war.
A satellite image on Fisherman’s phone illustrates what Ukrainian forces are up against: It shows a belt of antitank mines, five rows deep, in front of a Russian position. But before clearing a path through enemy mines, the sappers had to open a gap in their own.
An avid fisherman, Fisherman compares his hobby to his job, in the sense that both involve laying bait and waiting for a catch. He fought against Russia during an earlier phase of the conflict in 2015 but went back to work in the construction industry until the full-blown invasion last year.
The Mine Clearing Line Charge, or Miclic, can clear a corridor of up to 328 feet long through minefields, and wide enough to safely accommodate tanks or personnel carriers. It works by launching a hydraulic rocket carrying a line of C-4 explosive charges behind. As they detonate, they also trigger mines within range, including antipersonnel mines and magnetically activated mines.
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