Colossal Cleanup: Russian Forces Defuse Mines in Aleppo's Residential Areas

Combat engineers from the Russian Armed Forces' International Mine Action Center work almost 24 hours a day on demining houses, streets and socially significant facilities in the eastern part of Aleppo.

According to estimates of the Russian military, the scale of mining in Aleppo is very large, so the International Mine Action Center has repeatedly called the UN and other international organizations on cooperating with Russia on clearing the city of explosives.

However, a month after Aleppo was liberated neither the United Nations Mine Action Service, nor the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining offered their help to residents of the city and the Russian Armed Forces.

On January 31, a branch of the Russian Armed Forces' International Mine Action Center opened in Aleppo. It will train the best of Syrian troops to participate in mine clearance of the liberated territories.

By the end of January, experts of the Syrian branch of the Russian Armed Forces’ International Mine Action Center cleared more than 200 socially significant facilities, 3,210 buildings on the territory of more than 2,000 hectares, 709 kilometers of roads and deactivated almost 30,000 explosive objects.

For continuous cleaning outside the densely built-up area, the Russian Armed Forces use Uran-6 air-mobile multi-role robotic mine disposal systems.

The General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces noted that terrorist groups operating in Syria used more devious methods of mining, therefore Russian sappers now face the task times harder than they had in Afghanistan.

Agreements of accession to the reconciliation process were signed with the heads of more than a thousand localities provinces, allowing restoration of road and infrastructure, destroyed during the war.

At the end of January, Russian engineers found a warehouse full of directional antipersonnel mines and cumulative antitank mines in Syria. All those mines were factory-made and of good quality. According to the International Mine Action Center’s director Igor Mikhalik, it is evidence of that the serious mine war that was going on there.