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déminage

reportages

Published in Issue 31 - Humanitarian action and social action: a common front?

Killing fields – A report by Felice Rosa

  • Felice Rosa
Felice Rosa
Felice RosaFelice Rosa is an Italian documentary photographer and a member of Hans Lucas press agency. His work consistently engages with questions of borders, displacement and environmental change. Early in his career he documented life in the Choucha refugee camp near the Tunisia-Libya border, capturing the human consequences of contested frontiers and the bureaucratic abandonment of displaced people. He also photographed protests and social struggles in Zarzis, Tunisia, where local communities confronted migration policies and state repression. Other significant early projects include reportage from Kobane on the Syria-Turkey border, and long term visual studies of urban transformation in Marseille and the effects of drought on agricultural landscapes in Sicily, where climate change reshapes both livelihoods and ecosystems. His images reflect a commitment to bearing witness to lived realities at the intersections of geopolitical constraint and everyday life.
Photography Russia-Ukraine Conflict Ukraine War War Crimes War Reporting

Felice Rosa is an Italian documentary photographer and a member of Hans Lucas press agency. His work consistently engages with ques­tions of borders, displacement and environmental change. Early in his career he documented life in the Choucha refugee camp near the Tunisia-Libya border, capturing the human consequences of contested frontiers and the bureaucratic abandonment of displaced people. He also photographed protests and social struggles in Zarzis, Tunisia, where local communities confronted migration policies and state repression.

Other significant early projects include reportage from Kobane on the Syria-Turkey border, and longterm visual studies of urban transforma­tion in Marseille and the effects of drought on agricultural landscapes in Sicily, where climate change reshapes both livelihoods and ecosystems. His images reflect a commitment to bearing witness to lived realities at the intersections of geopolitical constraint and everyday life.

In October 2025, Felice Rosa documented the humanitarian and envi­ronmental impact of mines in Ukraine, focusing on clearance operations and the pervasive risks these weapons pose to rural communities, ag­riculture and mobility. His work captures how explosive hazards shape both daily life and longterm recovery.

The project also engages with changing international norms: in May 2025 Ukraine formally withdrew from the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning antipersonnel mines, a step mirrored by countries including Poland, Finland and the Baltic states, raising complex questions about landmine policy amid ongoing conflict.

See also, in this issue, Jean-Baptiste Richardier, “Back to the killing fields? Anti-personnel mines return from the dustbin of history”.

“Everyone has been affected by the mines. There have been accidents in the fields: our tractor hit a mine, a child died and we still live in danger,” testi­fies Yroslav, a farmer in Yevhenivka, in the Mykolaiv countryside in southern Ukraine. Three years after the withdraw­al of Russian forces on 7 November 2022, the villages and land along the former front lines remain severely affected: anti-personnel mines and unexploded munitions threaten daily life. According to Ivan Kukhta, the military administra­tor of Snihurivka, more than 10,000 hec­tares are classified as high risk. Since the region’s liberation, 41,243 hectares have been cleared, mainly agricultural land, while at the national level 9.8 million hectares remain unusable. More than a hundred organisations – public, private and non-governmental – are taking part in demining operations.

Andrei, the HALO Trust’s field officer for Novopetrivska, Yevhenivka and Snihurivka (villages crossed by the front line in 2022), reports that the NGO has neutralised around 15,000 mines and other unexploded munitions in the Mykolaiv region. According to govern­mental official sources, in 2025, roughly 70,000 unexploded devices and mines had been removed from the Mykolaiv region and 26,000 hectares of land had been demined. In 2025, the Economy Ministry, responsible for coordinating clearance operations, launched an ac­celeration plan that includes the follow­ing: a budget of three billion hryvnias (UAH, approximately 60 million euros); reimbursements covering up to 100% of costs for farmers; opening markets via the Prozorro platform; increasing the number of certified operators; and training programmes.

At the end of October 2025, the inter­national conference on mine action, held in Tokyo and organised by Japan and the United Nations Development Programme, brought together repre­sentatives from more than thirty donor countries. It resulted in the creation of a $150 million (USD) fund to modernise equipment, train local teams and coor­dinate operations in the hardest-hit regions, such as Mykolaiv and Kherson.

Demining operations, risk-education sessions and reforestation projects un­derscore both the persistent scale of the threat posed by mines and other unex­ploded devices to Ukraine’s reconstruc­tion, and the resilience of communities confronting a war legacy deeply imprint­ed on the land.

 

Rural area in the Mykolaiv Oblast in the south of Ukraine where the non-governmental organisation (NGO) the HALO Trust conducts manual demining operations. In the Mykolaiv region, often described as one of Europe’s key grain-producing areas, large portions of farmland remain uncultivated due to the continued presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance left behind by fighting that took place four years ago.

 

Warning sign marking the presence of landmines in a rural area of the Mykolaiv region, with a stray dog nearby. Wildlife and stray animals are often among the first victims, as their movements can trigger explosive devices. These incidents frequently act as early warning signals, prompting the launch of non-technical survey activities – preliminary information-gathering assessments used to identify and define suspected hazardous areas – before technical clearance begins.

 

 

Note (by ISW): The disorderly withdrawal of Russian forces from around Kyiv makes precise mapping of the situation in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts difficult. There are likely no organised Russian defensive positions in these oblasts, but Ukrainian forces are conducting operations to clear “lost orcs” – Russians left behind in the with­drawal. We will not attempt to map these clearing operations. Ukrainian forces may have already regained control of more of the Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts than we depict, but we do not yet have sufficient evidence to adjust our assessed areas of advance be­yond those shown here. The situation will likely clear up over the next few days, and we will adjust the advance and/or control lines accordingly.

Note (by Felice Rosa) : The map shows the ter­ritories (in red) occupied by the Russian army, followed by the Ukrainian army’s counterof­fensives (in light blue) as of 7 April 2022. The photo report was taken in the areas marked in blue: north of Kyiv, south of Ukraine in the Mykolaiv Oblast, and in the Kharkiv Oblast in the east of the country.

Note (by Humanitarian Alternatives) : The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the American Enterprise Institute are two think tanks widely regarded as neo­conservative, warmongering and linked to the United States government. For an interactive, evolving map of the situation in Ukraine, based on information from the ISW but cross-referenced with data from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the War Mapper project, see: « Les cartes de la guerre en Ukraine, depuis le début de l’invasion russe », Le Monde, 10 juin 2025, (map updated every week – In French only)

 

 

Aziza (the HALO Trust), leader of two manual demining teams and one mechanical demining team in the Mykolaiv region. Originally from the Donetsk region, occupied by the Russian army since 2014, she began working as a deminer in 2020 in the Ukrainian controlled areas where the HALO Trust was active prior to the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

 

HALO Trust deminer during a manual clearance operation in the countryside of Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, on 23 October 2025. When the metal detector emits a signal, a 25-centimetre safety perimeter is established around the strongest point, followed by a second 25-centimetre perimeter marking where excavation begins.

 

Remnants of unexploded ordnance discovered during clearance operations carried out by the Ukrainian Deminers Association (UDA) in the rural areas of Mykolaiv. Deminers report a wide range of devices, primarily of Soviet-era manufacture. In 2025, they also documented an anti-personnel mine fitted with an advanced triggering mechanism.

 

Maxime, 36, a mechanic with ATOM, a humanitarian organisation involved in demining operations. He lost a foot in 2023 after triggering an anti-personnel mine during a military mission. He is now a member of the national amputee football team and competes in the national veterans’ championship.

 

Iranian-made Shahed drones and a Russian-made Uragan missile were found in Mykhailo’s fields. To avoid delays caused by official clearance procedures, some farmers handle and move explosive remnants themselves in order to continue working their land, exposing themselves to serious risk.

 

Mykhailo, a farmer and local entrepreneur, stands inside the remains of a grain storage facility in the Mykolaiv countryside, photographed on 26 October 2025. In 2022, the facility was hit by a Russian drone strike, sparking a fire that destroyed the entire annual grain harvest. He continues to face the financial consequences of the loss.

 

Remains of a Russian missile shot down by Ukrainian air defence in September 2025 in the Drevliansky Nature Reserve, northern Ukraine. Parts of the nature reserve remain contaminated by mines and explosive hazards, as clearance efforts are focused first on agricultural land under a prioritisation policy adopted by Ukraine’s Economy Ministry to return farmland to safe use.

 

Ivan, 25, a forest ranger in the Drevliansky Nature Reserve in northern Ukraine. During the months of Russian occupation, the rangers’ extensive knowledge of the terrain proved vital to Ukrainian military operations and to the local population, helping troops navigate hidden routes and providing crucial information about the landscape

 

Sergii, an agronomist with the NGO the HALO Trust, inspects the condition of an oak tree in the countryside of Mykolaiv. In addition to clearance work, the organisation supports post-demining ecosystem restoration, including planting forest belts to prevent wind erosion and conserve soil humidity critical for autumn-sown crops. For Sergii, restoring nature also means allowing human presence to step back so ecosystems can recover more freely.

 

Children in one of the villages of Snuhurivska rural hromada observe a minute of silence for the dead and wounded of Ukraine on 24 October 2025. In this rural community, the presence of landmines and related incidents has limited children’s ability to safely explore surrounding fields and forests.

 

Julya, 32, a primary school teacher, has taught at the same school for ten years. She notes that over the past five years, the presence of landmines and the constant danger children face outside their homes – combined with the war and invasion – have intensified a process of psychological withdrawal that first emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

A deminer from the NGO the HALO Trust manually clearing a field in the countryside of Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, on 23 October 2025. Since March 2022, this field had been used as a checkpoint by the Russian army during its eightmonth attempt to advance toward the city of Mykolaiv. In the Mykolaiv region alone, hundreds of thousands of hectares of land remain contaminated with mines and explosive remnants of war, with estimates of around 280,000–290,000 hectares still being mined despite extensive clearance efforts.

 

Ukrainian flag commemorating the 7 November offensive and the retreat of the Russian army, placed in front of a field that remains mined. Three years later, the consequences of the war continue to affect the territory and rural economy of the Mykolaiv region, despite the clearance of 26,000 hectares of land and the neutralisation of more than 70,000 explosive devices.

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