Ukraine has significantly increased its demining capabilities over the year by growing the number of mine action operators and demining vehicles several times. This was stated by the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal during the Second Demine Ukraine Forum held on 2 December in Kyiv. By the end of the year, both public and private operators have 151 humanitarian demining vehicles, and the number of deminers has increased to more than 4,000.

"We are grateful to all our partners for providing more and more demining vehicles. At the same time, we focus on localisation and development of Ukrainian production. Ukrainian equipment and equipment from foreign companies manufactured in Ukraine already operates in the fields and showing excellent results. We urge our partners who want to help us with equipment to order the production of new machines at Ukrainian enterprises. This will be a double help for us: both for the economy and our security," said Denys Shmyhal at the opening of the event.

Another important achievement of this year was the opening of the humanitarian demining market, which allowed private mine action operators to be involved in humanitarian demining. This was announced by Yuliia Svyrydenko, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine, summing up the results of the current year in the industry.

"To help farmers, we have launched a compensation mechanism for demining services and cover 100% of the cost of such work. We have already held 31 auctions in the Prozorro system, which resulted in agreements worth almost half a billion hryvnias. We managed to reduce the initial price by more than 17%, saving about UAH 92 million. The programme will continue next year, with UAH 1 billion earmarked for it," said Yuliia Svyrydenko.

One of the key objectives for the Government and the Ministry of Economy is to support innovations in humanitarian demining. New technologies, such as the use of drones with mine detection sensors, can become game-changers in mine action, said Yuliia Svyrydenko. Therefore, the Ministry of Economy will work to increase the number of grants for innovators next year.

In total, the forum brought together over 350 participants, including representatives of the Government, international organisations, business, non-governmental initiatives, and mine action experts. During the thematic panels, the economic impact of demining, technologies and innovations in mine action, production of demining equipment, etc. were addressed.

The broadcast of each panel of the Forum is available here.

The partners of the Demine Ukraine Forum were the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine, FUIB, Kyivstar, Uklon, Starlightmedia, the American Chamber of Commerce, and the European Business Association.