A Russian strike killed two Norwegian People's Aid deminers and wounded four others in Kherson Oblast on 24 June, the group said. The team was clearing mines from Ukrainian farmland when the strike hit. Ukrainian prosecutors opened a war-crimes investigation.

Russia has turned Ukraine into the world's most mined country, contaminating tens of thousands of square kilometers of farmland that only a few thousand clearance workers can slowly make safe—work measured in decades, not years.

A strike at midday on a demining team

The strike hit at about 12:50 p.m. near the village of Novopetrivka, in the Vysokopillia community, Norwegian People's Aid said. One worker was killed at the scene, and a colleague taken to hospital later died of wounds. Four others were wounded, two in serious condition as doctors fought to save their lives.

The dead and wounded were all Ukrainian nationals, the group said. A 24-year-old demining specialist was among those killed, the head of Kherson Oblast Military Administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, reported. The team had been clearing land of mines and unexploded ordnance, a basic condition for farmers to return to their fields and for displaced people to come home.

"Military authorities in Kherson report through Ukrainian media that Norwegian People's Aid was struck by a Russian Iskander‑M missile. The organization is still working to verify this information and the exact circumstances surrounding the attack," the organization wrote in its press release.

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A war-crimes case

Viktoriya Fedotova, head of the Ukrainian NGO Martin-Club and a partner of the demining team, wrote that the workers had taken no part in combat. They were clearing Ukrainian soil so civilians could be safe, she said, and her own team had trained alongside the dead only recently. Attacking those who save lives and make land safe is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, she added.

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A usual day of Russian strikes across the oblast

Across Kherson Oblast over the preceding 24 hours, Russian drones and artillery hit Kherson city and dozens of settlements, the regional administration reported. The strikes killed two people while wounding 16. 

By late afternoon on 24 June, prosecutors had logged one civilian killed and 11 wounded across the oblast from artillery, mortars, drones, and a ballistic strike. A drone hit a civilian fuel station around 5 p.m., seriously wounding two people.

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The strikes continued the next morning.

• On 25 June, prosecutors opened a fresh war-crimes case over drone attacks on a city hospital and a utility worker.
• Around 8 a.m., a drone strike on the Kherson hospital wounded five of its medical and technical staff.
• At 9:10 a.m., a drone wounded a 63-year-old utility worker in the Korabelnyi district, and just before 11 a.m. another strike hurt a 61-year-old man in the same district.
• A 62-year-old woman was hospitalized with blast and head injuries from a Shahed strike in the Central district the day before, and a 16-year-old boy needed care for a blast injury from another drone strike there.
• A 60-year-old woman and a man sought help after a drone hit their car between Bilozerka and Pryozerne.

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A pattern of strikes on those who help

UN investigators have previously ruled Russia's deliberate drone hunting of Kherson's civilians and rescuers a crime against humanity, tracing the campaign up the chain of command. Russian forces have hit humanitarian deminers before: in September 2025, a Russian missile killed two workers and wounded five from a Danish Refugee Council clearance team near Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine.

Ukraine's military shared the demining technologies tested at UTTC Technology Week 2026. The 40-tonne ScanJack 3500 heavy demining machine and robotic platforms for urban operations were among the showcased systems, ArmyInform reports.

The combined heavy-machine and robotic-platform showcase fits Ukraine's broader shift toward remote demining, with the defenders emphasizing field experience over theoretical demonstration. Ukraine remains the world's most mine-contaminated country, with approximately 460,000 hectares of territory identified for clearance.

Practical goals from the showcase are to reduce risk to personnel, shorten survey and clearance times, raise situational awareness, and expand the share of dangerous work performed remotely, per ArmyInform.

ScanJack 3500 clears mines to 30–40 cm depth at walking pace

The ScanJack 3500 weighs nearly 40 tonnes and clears mines to a maximum depth of 30 to 40 centimeters. The machine operates at speeds between 0.2 and 1.5 kilometers per hour during demining and consumes 50 to 90 liters of fuel per hour, depending on conditions.

The operator works from inside an armored cab covered with steel paneling and bulletproof glass, controlling the system via a joystick. The Swedish-built machine carries two engines — one for the vehicle's drivetrain and one for the demining attachment.

Robotic platforms tackle urban demining in destroyed areas

Robotic platforms for searching, detecting, and destroying explosive ordnance were also showcased for use in hard-to-access urban environments such as destroyed settlements, industrial zones, and private-sector buildings. Work in urban conditions is jewelry-precise and super-dangerous because of mine-traps, trip wires, and rubble. The ground robotic platforms' main task is not only to neutralize explosives but to keep Ukrainian sappers out of immediate proximity to them.

In recent months, Ukraine has codified domestic ground robots specifically for sapper roles, including the NEO-1 modular platform and the upgraded Vepr ground robotic complex. The Defense Ministry's broader procurement target is more than 25,000 ground robotic complexes in the first half of 2026, which is twice as many as in all of 2025.

Shuvarskyi says showcase reflected operational practice, not theory

"What we presented at UTTC Technology Week was not theoretical projections, but real field experience of demining units," Colonel Oleh Shuvarskyi said during demonstration events.

Most demonstrated technologies have dual-use applications and can be deployed for both humanitarian demining and military mobility, engineering reconnaissance, remote inspection of dangerous territories, logistics, evacuation, and engineering tasks in combat areas. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines, a step that follows the Baltic nations and Poland's move to boost their defense as the war rages on in Ukraine.

The 1997 treaty, joined by over 160 countries, bans the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines in efforts to protect civilians from the scattered explosives that could still injure them long after the conflict is over.

"Russia has never been a party to this convention and uses anti-personnel mines extremely cynically," Zelensky said in justifying the decision. "And not only now, in the war against Ukraine. This is the signature style of Russian killers — to destroy life by all methods at their disposal.

Earlier in March, the Baltic states and Poland announced their intention to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, a significant shift in defense policy that shows how countries near Ukraine are preparing for a potential war in Europe.

Anti-personnel mines are scattered across the battlefield in Ukraine, with soldiers and civilians often losing their feet or limbs due to detonations. Territories liberated by Ukraine since 2022 have been heavily covered with mines, making it extremely difficult and dangerous to clear them. Russia has used more than a dozen variants of anti-personnel mines since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to Human Rights Watch's June report.

In a surprise move that angered Moscow, the Biden administration in 2024 approved the provision of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine. Then Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said it was to help Ukraine stall the Russian advances in the east as the front-line situation deteriorated.

"This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded," lawmaker Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliament's defense committee, said in the Facebook post announcing a significant move forward in withdrawing from the major mine treaty.

Now that Zelensky signed the decree enacting the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, it will land on the parliament's table, Kostenko said. The dates when the decision will take effect are still unclear.

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Finland's parliament voted on June 19 to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines, citing growing security concerns from Russia's aggressive posture and the threat it poses to the region, Reuters reported.

The vote aligns Finland with its Baltic allies, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, whose parliaments have already approved similar exits from the treaty.

Defending the decision earlier this week, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said the security reality along Finland's 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) border with Russia had changed dramatically since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to TVP.

"The reality in the endgame is that we have as our neighboring country an aggressive, imperialist state called Russia, which itself is not a member of the Ottawa Treaty and which itself uses landmines ruthlessly," Stubb said.

Russia has widely deployed landmines across Ukrainian territory since launching its invasion in 2022, a tactic condemned by human rights organizations and Western governments.

Finland, which joined NATO in 2023, has significantly ramped up its defense posture amid growing concern over potential Russian provocations. The country closed its border with Russia over a year ago, accusing Moscow of orchestrating a "hybrid operation" by directing asylum seekers toward Finnish territory. Helsinki claims such hybrid tactics have intensified since it joined the alliance.

The Finnish Border Guard completed the first 35 kilometers (22 miles) of a planned 200-kilometer (124-mile) fence along its eastern frontier on May 21. The move came amid growing evidence of Russian military infrastructure expansion near the Finnish border.

Finland is "closely monitoring and assessing Russia's activities and intentions," Finland's Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen told AFP on May 22.

"We have excellent capabilities to observe Russian operations. As a member of the alliance, Finland holds a strong security position."

Russia's Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said in December 2024 that Moscow must be ready for a potential conflict with NATO within the next decade. Western officials have repeatedly warned of the possibility that Moscow could target NATO members in the coming years.

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