Humanitarian demining is still discussed primarily as a security mission. Technically, that is correct. In practical terms, however, an operator is performing a different task: removing a constraint from an asset that is not functioning. A field that a tractor cannot enter is no different from a blocked bank account.

The scale is well known. In April 2026, the Humanitarian Demining Center estimated that 128,000 square kilometers were potentially contaminated, compared with 179,000 square kilometers at the beginning of the full-scale war. Preliminary estimates suggest that clearing even 80% of these areas could take up to ten years.

At the same time, there is another figure that appears less frequently in presentations. Under the state compensation program for demining costs, operators cleared 388 hectares of agricultural land in April 2026 and 572 hectares in March. At this pace, talking about ten years makes little sense.

Both figures are true, and that is precisely why they need to be considered together.

Land That Produces Nothing

The priority regions are obvious: Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Sumy, and Kharkiv. Agriculture there was not simply one sector among many, but the foundation of local economies.

When a plot of land is removed from productive use, the losses do not end with the lost harvest of an individual farm. Demand for services, machinery, and fuel disappears. Employment declines, followed by lower revenues for local communities. The value of the land itself falls because there is no buyer for a plot with an uncertain contamination status. Investment decisions are postponed, often permanently, because capital moves to neighboring regions. People leave in search of work.

The cost of demining should therefore be viewed not simply as expenditure, but as the cost of unlocking an asset. The only question is how many years it will take for that asset to return to productive use, and whether it will return at all.

The Market Already Exists, and It Operates Through Procurement Rules

The model in which demining was financed primarily by donors is gradually changing. It is now a process with a clear mechanism.

A farmer submits an application through the State Agrarian Register. The fact of contamination is confirmed by the Mine Action Center based on a non-technical survey conducted by a certified operator. The cost of the work is determined through open tenders on Prozorro.

Compensation for one contaminated plot is paid once. Funding is provided within the framework of the Ukraine Facility, while the 2026 state budget allocates UAH 2 billion to the “Humanitarian Demining” program.

This is no longer simply humanitarian assistance. It is a competitive service market with a market-based price.

And it is producing results where they were least expected. The first plot cleared under the compensation program, covering 487 hectares, cost UAH 15 million, which was 55% below the expected amount. In December 2025, the average cost of a hectare cleared under the program was approximately UAH 56,800.

The Bottleneck Is Not Money

If the price is falling and the budget has been allocated, it is logical to ask why the volumes remain so small.

Since the beginning of the program, as of spring 2026, 125 demining agreements had been signed covering 24,900 hectares at a total value of UAH 1.573 billion. In other words, contracts exist. Execution is lagging behind. By late spring, the Ministry of Economy reported only five completed agreements covering approximately 600 hectares.

For comparison, in December 2025 operators completed 15 agreements and cleared 3,020 hectares in a single month.

Public data do not provide a detailed breakdown of the reasons, so what follows is an assumption rather than a fact.

The assumption is that three factors are limiting progress, and none of them is financing.

The first is the administrative cycle before work can begin: confirmation of contamination, commission decisions, and procurement.

The second is the physical availability of certified operators and equipment in the specific areas where orders exist, rather than their average availability across the country.

The third is the productivity of manual clearance on difficult terrain where mechanical preparation is impossible.

This can be verified in only one way: statistics need to be broken down not by hectares, but by stages, so it becomes possible to see where each task spends the longest time. Until such a public breakdown exists, any discussion about scaling remains largely speculative.

The Multiplier Works, but Not at the First Step

A cleared hectare does not create an economy by itself. It creates an opportunity.

What happens next depends on what is decided to produce on that land.

A grain-production model returns the land to productive use and generates demand for machinery, fuel, fertilizers, logistics, and storage.

Horticulture, berry production, greenhouses, and processing create significantly more jobs per hectare, but require investment, water, labor, and markets. That means three to five years and a separate decision by the owner.

I have not seen reliable public calculations of employment per hectare for Ukraine’s affected regions. This is precisely the figure communities need when deciding what to request from donors.

Demining should therefore be integrated into regional development programs rather than placed alongside them. Otherwise, a cleared field may simply remain unused and overgrown for several years.

Technology: Where It Actually Creates More Cleared Hectares

Ukraine’s situation cannot be addressed using methodologies designed for much smaller contaminated areas.

Productivity must be increased dramatically without compromising safety standards. That is the technical task, and it can be divided into four different challenges.

1. Data and Prioritization

There is already a functioning tool: the national GRIT platform for planning, prioritizing, and monitoring demining operations, built on Palantir and tested in a pilot project in Kharkiv region.

Ukrainian developers have integrated more than 100 datasets from 26 sources, including soil characteristics, economic activity, the condition of social infrastructure, and the number of residents in communities.

The logic is illustrative. If two plots in different communities have the same level of danger, the system also considers the distance to the nearest grain elevator and the structure of the infrastructure network.

This is prioritization based on economic impact rather than simply processing applications in chronological order.

GRIT is planned to be integrated into the annual demining planning process.

Such data immediately produce uncomfortable answers. According to the platform, more than 10,000 hectares are classified as potentially dangerous while still being cultivated by farmers. As of March 2026, approximately 9,000 square kilometers were still awaiting non-technical survey. Until that process is complete, any estimate of areas requiring technical clearance remains just that: an estimate.

The well-known claim that Ukraine would need “700 years” to be demined is illustrative. According to Olena Pareniuk, a prioritization coordinator with the Demine Ukraine team, the figure was obtained simply by multiplying an IMAS productivity standard by an area of 174,000 square kilometers.

In an industry where key numbers can emerge through multiplication rather than measurement, a data platform is not an auxiliary service. It is basic infrastructure.

2. Machines and Robotic Systems

This is a direct multiplier of productivity on large fields and the only way to remove people from some of the most dangerous operations.

A Ukrainian technological ecosystem is emerging here as well. The modernized Germina demining machine underwent trials at the training ground of Ukrainian Demining Services and passed testing by the State Scientific Research Institute for Testing and Certification of Weapons and Military Equipment.

The reason for developing such a machine was stated directly by operators: some foreign machines previously used in Ukraine were not suited to Ukrainian conditions.

In 2025, the Ministry of Defense opened a testing ground for modern demining technologies, creating a channel for validation.

3. Detection

Mines containing minimal amounts of metal remain a major challenge. Multisensor systems are therefore more promising than relying on a single sophisticated detector.

UAVs have made data collection for non-technical and technical surveys fundamentally cheaper. However, remote sensing produces a probability map, not confirmation.

4. Operational Methodology

The fourth task is the least visible and yet decisive.

Timur Pystriuha, Chairman of the Board of the Association of Sappers of Ukraine, summarized the issue after 2025 by stating that technology alone does not guarantee effectiveness. Equipment must be precisely matched to the terrain and conditions, while a key priority for 2026 is improving technological processes: methodologies for operating robotic systems, planning operations, and optimizing the sequence of actions.

Without this, even the best equipment cannot deliver its full potential.

This is where the greatest amount of time is currently being lost.

A demonstration at a testing ground does not give an operator a single additional hectare until the equipment is integrated into an approved methodology with measured productivity.

The gap between “works in a demonstration” and “approved for operational use” is longer than the gap between an idea and a prototype.

Why Investors Should Pay Attention

Now to how the sector looks from a financial perspective.

At present, it does not look particularly attractive, and not because there is no market.

Humanitarian demining is still largely financed according to the logic of “find the money, then do the work.” That is not a business model. It is a queue for grants.

The consequences are visible globally. The sector is experiencing funding cuts. At the beginning of 2025, the United States, the largest donor to mine action, froze foreign assistance, after which some humanitarian demining programs were suspended.

Global annual funding for mine action had exceeded $1 billion, while international funding declined by 5% in 2024 despite an increase in the overall volume, largely driven by Ukraine.

A sector dependent on a single decision from a single budget cannot reliably plan equipment purchases or staffing.

Ukraine’s compensation mechanism is therefore particularly interesting because it is one of the few places where this logic has changed.

There is a customer, a competitive procurement process, and a publicly visible price per hectare: approximately UAH 56,800 in December 2025 and around UAH 30,800 for the first completed plot.

This creates something that does not exist in the traditional humanitarian model: unit economics.

Revenue per hectare is known. Equipment productivity can be measured. Therefore, the payback period for equipment can be calculated.

What prevents that calculation from being completed is also clear: annual budget allocations and the absence of contracted multi-year volumes.

An operator cannot justify purchasing a machine worth several million hryvnias on the basis of a program that is approved anew every year.

Multi-year framework agreements with a guaranteed minimum volume would change this faster than any grant program supporting manufacturers.

The demand horizon is not temporary, even if we would like it to be.

As of November 2025, 57 countries and two territories remained contaminated, with Ukraine, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Iraq among the most heavily contaminated.

Since the Mine Ban Treaty entered into force, only 31 countries have completed clearance, and only five of them have done so since 2014.

The normal timeframe for completing the task in an individual country is therefore measured in decades.

There is another development the sector rarely discusses: Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have initiated procedures to withdraw from the Mine Ban Convention.

Mine contamination in Europe is being created anew, rather than simply cleared.

The Technology Spillover Effect

Demining may appear to be a technologically narrow field. That is precisely why it generates opportunities in adjacent industries.

The requirements are stricter than in most civilian applications: operations must be conducted on unknown terrain, with zero tolerance for missing a target and with documented confidence for every meter.

A ground robotic platform capable of operating in a minefield can subsequently be adapted for mining, forestry, municipal services, and agriculture.

Multisensor detection and data fusion are equally relevant to geophysics, underground utility mapping, pipeline inspection, and archaeology.

Aerial and satellite change analysis developed to identify traces of combat can be applied to crop monitoring, insurance, and cadastral systems.

A geospatial prioritization platform is a ready-made tool for managing virtually any land portfolio, including reporting for European funds.

The soil-analysis chain required to return land to productive use is also infrastructure for carbon farming and compliance with the environmental requirements of EU agricultural policy.

Personal protective equipment and mine-resistant engineering solutions can transition into industrial safety and transportation.

Most importantly, a solution validated in Ukraine gains a reference that cannot simply be purchased.

Fifty-seven contaminated countries are not an abstract export opportunity. They represent a list of potential customers with decades of work ahead.

Ukraine is the only country where technologies can simultaneously be developed, tested on real contamination, and deployed through a service market operating at market-based prices.

There is no other place where all three conditions exist at the same time.

A Cleared Field Does Not Necessarily Mean a Usable Field

Explosive ordnance is only the first stage of the work.

What remains is the condition of the soil: heavy metals, combustion products, disturbed soil structure, and erosion in areas where shelterbelts have been destroyed.

The Ministry of Defense has already referred to chemical analysis of agricultural soils as part of a comprehensive approach, with recommendations to landowners and communities regarding subsequent use.

Water bodies are a separate issue. According to the United Nations, approximately 13,500 square kilometers of water areas are contaminated, including the Dnipro, lakes, and the Black Sea coast.

This is an area that currently has almost no established commercial methodologies.

For Europe, this is not an abstract concern. EU agricultural policy is increasingly linking support to environmental conditions for land use.

A plot cleared without understanding the condition of its soil may eventually be formally safe while remaining unsuitable for the agricultural model for which it was cleared.

Radiological Monitoring Is Missing from the Process

There is an issue that is almost entirely absent from the demining discussion: munitions containing uranium have been used on Ukrainian territory.

In July 2026, the Security Service of Ukraine documented new cases. Radioactive components were detected in the warheads of attack drones used to strike Chernihiv region in April and June 2026.

Radiological surveys of impact sites recorded radiation levels up to 80 times above natural background. Gamma radiation from individual fragments ranged from 8.3 to 24 μSv/h, compared with an acceptable level of 0.3 μSv/h. Expert analysis identified the material as uranium-235 and uranium-238. Similar cases had previously been documented in Sumy region.

There is also a separate class of armor-piercing sub-caliber ammunition containing depleted-uranium alloy penetrators. These are different stories in terms of origin, and the publicly reported isotope ratios do not allow them to be treated as one phenomenon.

For an operator, however, the origin of the material is not the main issue.

The important question is: is anyone measuring it?

Formally, the state has the necessary instruments. The methodology for agrochemical land certification provides for comprehensive radiological monitoring of agricultural land and additional radiological surveys. The State Soil Protection Service monitors soil contamination by radionuclides and heavy metals and prepares proposals for bringing such land back into productive use.

The problem is that this system was designed around the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster. It operates through area-based sampling and is not triggered by the completion of demining.

The two processes exist in parallel and are not connected.

The consequence is uncomfortable.

A contaminated area cannot be surveyed before demining because people cannot safely enter it. Therefore, the first people to physically enter such land are the sappers themselves. They come into direct contact with potentially contaminated soil and fragments without a standard procedure for identifying such finds or dedicated equipment.

A dense, unusually shaped metal fragment can easily end up in the general scrap-metal stream.

This is therefore not simply a question of radiological monitoring of land. It requires a three-level system.

Before operations, during non-technical survey, the task is data analysis: what types of ammunition were used in the area, where impacts were recorded, and where damaged armored vehicles were located.

No one needs to enter the field for this. The result is a risk designation and appropriate preparation of the team.

During operations, the team should have a dosimeter, a dedicated SOP for dense metal finds, tool and footwear controls, and respiratory protection at sites containing burned equipment.

After completion, soil samples should be taken and laboratory analysis conducted before the land is returned to productive use, alongside testing for heavy metals rather than as a separate procedure years later.

I found no public discussion of this sequence in the materials of relevant authorities or industry reviews.

It is not the most important issue facing demining. But it is one of those problems where the cost of closing the gap can currently be measured by the price of a device added to a team’s equipment, while the cost of leaving it unresolved accumulates in human lives.

Digitalization and the Role of Communities

At this scale, manual administration guarantees delays, errors, and corruption risks.

The State Agrarian Register, geospatial data, automated document verification, and Prozorro tenders partially address the problem, but only within their respective stages of the process.

The next step concerns not the transparency of expenditure, but the substance of reporting.

Hectares cleared, explosive items neutralized, and the number of field deployments describe the operator’s work. They do not describe the result for the territory.

Donors and communities want to see something else:

• how many hectares have actually returned to productive use;
• how much of that land is cultivated the following season;
• how many jobs have been created;
• how local budget revenues have changed.

This also explains the role of communities.

Local authorities know better than any central registry where clearing one plot could unlock a business, where demining a road could restore logistics, and where technically correct clearance would nevertheless produce little economic value.

Prioritization based on the level of mine risk is necessary, but insufficient.

The second criterion should be the expected socioeconomic impact, and a platform capable of calculating that already exists.

What Follows from This

The compensation mechanism for demining costs for agricultural producers should be preserved and expanded. It is the most transparent part of the system.

Annual budget allocations should be replaced with multi-year framework agreements with guaranteed minimum volumes. Without this, operators will not invest in equipment, and without equipment, the pace will not change.

Public statistics should be reported not only in hectares, but by stages of the process, making it possible to see where the delay occurs: documentation, procurement, operator availability, or field operations.

Ukrainian equipment manufacturers need not so much grants as a fast and predictable path from testing to inclusion in an approved methodology with measured productivity.

Radiological monitoring should be integrated into the land-clearance cycle: data at the survey stage, equipment and procedures within the demining team, and sampling before the land is returned to productive use.

Demining should be a line item in community development programs, alongside processing, water, and energy, rather than being treated as a separate security issue.

Mine contamination will remain with Ukraine for a long time. Judging by global trends, the task will not end with our generation or even the next one.

This is bad news, but it is also a reason to stop treating the sector as a temporary humanitarian campaign.

While the monthly output of the program is measured in hundreds of hectares rather than tens of thousands, discussion of the technological cluster must proceed in parallel with discussion of capacity and normal long-term contracts.

All three are necessary.

Without the other two, the first remains only a presentation.

Andromeda Demining Systems. Humanitarian demining, mine action, and technological solutions.

Ivan Vereshchaka
Advisor, Andromeda Demining Systems
PhD in Economics