Ukraine: Mine-Detection Dogs for the State Emergency Services of Ukraine (SESU)
In spring 2023, Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) delivered a total of 14 mine-detection dogs to Ukraine, with six designated for the State Emergency Services of Ukraine (SESU) and eight allocated for NPA operations. In the period of May to August the dogs and their handlers took part in training at SESU's Interregional Rapid Response Centre in Romny, Sumy Oblast. The joint training was delivered by NPA's experts on mine-detection dogs, with support from a trainer from NPA's Global Training Centre for detection dogs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After having completed the training, SESU obtained accreditation for the deployment of mine-detection dogs in early October.
Since then, the dogs have already been used in five different villages in the Kharkiv region and have so far found 40 items (including anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, projectiles, grenades, and fuzes). Dmytro, who is the head of SESU’s canine centre in Romny, says that the mine-detection dogs have been crucial to speeding up their humanitarian demining operations.
Mine-detection dogs find mines and other explosive ordnance by searching for the explosive material in them using their sense of smell. This is different from manual demining which uses metal detectors to search for metal contamination in explosive items. The dogs are especially useful in areas where there is a lot of scrap metal in the ground. There it is much faster to locate the items with the help from the dogs, than by using metal detectors. According to Dmytro, the SESU deminers that are working with the dogs also report good results and they tell him that they really enjoy working with the dogs, or as Dmytro says: – our staff already became great friends with the dogs.
Since 1992, Norwegian People’s Aid has removed more than 2 million anti-personnel landmines and explosive remnants of war in 40 countries, freeing 1 billion square metres of land for productive use. In 2023, NPA found and removed almost 800 explosive items in Ukraine, out of which 600 were found during survey and 200 were found during clearance. In November 2023, NPA became the first international organisation in Ukraine accredited for using mine-detection dogs in demining operations.
The results stories on the webpage of the Nansen Support Programme for Ukraine are based on texts produced and shared by the partners of the programme. The stories represent a snapshot of the results achieved to showcase the difference the Norwegian support is making.