Ukraine farmer blows up mines with remote

Ukrainian farmer has armour plated a remote-controlled tractor to blow up mines so he can get on with sowing seeds on his land in the spring.

Oleksandr Kryvtsov has kitted out his tractor with protective panels stripped from Russian tanks.

After Russian forces were driven back from parts of eastern Ukraine by a Ukrainian counter-offensive last year, mines remained in many fields.

The explosives make it perilous for farmers to sow grain for the next harvest.

Fields around the village of Hrakove are no exception.

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Mr Kryvtsov, a general manager at his agricultural company, decided he could not wait for help from overworked official deminers to clear his field.

Instead, he designed a remote-controlled tractor that could withstand blasts.

A worker uses a remote control to operate the demining machine

Using armour from damaged Russian military vehicles to protect the body of his tractor, he bought a system that would enable one of his team to operate the tractor remotely from a digger's bucket suspended in the air nearby.

"We started doing this just because the crop-sowing time has come and we can't do anything because the rescue services are very busy," he explained.

"We ran over an anti-tank mine. The protection got blown out (but) the tractor is safe," he added.

"Everyone's alive and safe. The equipment was restored and repaired."

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said last week about 30 per cent of Ukrainian territory had been mined by Russians and that the government was focused on de-mining agricultural land as quickly as possible.

"We have no time to demine the fields. The amount of work is enormous," said Serhii Dudak, head of a demining unit overseeing the tractor's work.

"It would take years to demine this particular field by hand and to guarantee that there are no mines here."

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