Lithuania is looking into the possibility of sending deminers to Ukraine at Kyiv’s request and already has one specialist working there, according to Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė.
“[A lack of] deminers is a problem that Ukraine’s interior minister has asked us to help solve and involve the EU in dealing with it,” the minister told the radio Žinių Radijas on Thursday.
“More than half of Ukrainian territory is currently in one or another state of having mines or explosives left behind [by Russian forces], so it is necessary to increase the capacity,” she said.
According to Bilotaitė, Ukraine has over 500 deminers, but it needs more to be able to neutralise explosives as quickly as possible while they are still visible through vegetation.
“We have sent one deminer as part of our team of investigators, but we are now looking into our internal resources [to send more],” she said.
Bilotaitė and her Latvian, Estonian and Polish counterparts are planning to ask France, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, to coordinate the deployment of demining specialists to Ukraine through a network of police agencies.
“We have drafted a joint letter [...] to the European Commission and the French presidency to coordinate this process,” the Lithuanian minister told the radio station.
“We are pressed for time, because the images [...] of Russians leaving explosives in children’s cribs and toys in their homes are simply terrible,” she added.
A team of Lithuanian officers has arrived in Ukraine to investigate possible war crimes.
“The team of investigators has the expertise that Ukraine has asked for,” Bilotaitė said.
The minister said the plan is to rotate teams of investigators, adding that this important for gathering evidence and then delivering justice.
All three Baltic countries have sent teams to Ukraine, and Bilotaitė hopes that other Western countries will do so as well.
Involvement in war?
If Lithuanian deminers were to take part in mine clearance efforts in Ukraine, this could be seen as involvement in the war, Lithuania’s Chief of Defence Lieutenant General Valdemaras Rupšys said on Thursday.
“NATO leaders [and] our leaders have said that we are not directly involved,” Rupšys told reporters. “NATO will certainly not be there with its personnel and will not fight, so going there and carrying out demining operations can be treated as direct involvement in that war.”
According to the chief of defense, “any presence of military personnel in Ukraine [...] will be possible once the appropriate political decisions are taken”.
Rupšys thinks that other solutions should be sought to help Ukraine clear its territory of mines and other explosives.
“Some companies and institutions that provide such a service could be involved,” he said.
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