OPINION | UKRAINE, THE WORLD’S BREADBASKET, WILL BECOME ITS MINEFIELD WITHOUT HELP

It took me several day-long treks in planes, trains and automobiles to reach Mykolaiv, one of the cities that Ukrainian forces have fiercely defended since Russia invaded in February 2022. When I finally arrived in late October, I found expanses of farmland which, aside from the sounds of artillery fire in the distance, seemed as peaceful as the farm fields I came to love in my rural hometown of Eupora, Miss.

However, these fields differ in one very significant way: They are littered with thousands of landmines and unexploded ordnance, courtesy of Putin’s crimes. I learned this firsthand from my host, retired British Army General James Cowan, now the CEO of The HALO Trust, the global landmine clearing organization where I serve as global ambassador.

Indeed, across Ukraine, about one-tenth of the soil — an area the size of West Virginia — is packed with hundreds of thousands of these buried explosives. Ukraine now has the sorry distinction of being one of the most mined countries in the world.

Seeing it with my own eyes made it clear that Russia’s use of these weapons is a tactic not just to win the war but also to poison Ukraine’s agricultural areas for generations to come. Unless the U.S. and others help with demining the farm fields that became battlefields, these hidden dangers will lay in wait for Ukrainian farmers and their children long after combat with Russia ends.

In Mykolaiv, HALO is working to clear 30 sites. But in that region alone, there are more than 1,000 that need to be cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance. And there are thousands of other such sites across the country in areas controlled currently by Ukraine and by Russia.

These buried explosive devices don’t just harm Ukraine; they are detrimental to the U.S. and the rest of the world. Russia’s strategy to destroy Ukrainian agriculture — to hobble one of the world’s biggest producers of grains and other essential crops — has battered the global food supply. The mining of farm fields and the blockading of food shipments have increased prices and pushed millions of people in the poorest countries to the brink of famine.

Unless fields like the ones I visited in Mykolaiv are demined, Ukraine will go from being the world’s breadbasket to a basket case.

Much is already being done to prevent that from happening. The HALO Trust is currently operating in seven regions of Ukraine with more than 1,000 of its people on the ground. Next year HALO will add another 500 workers to its Ukraine efforts. It receives some of its funding from the U.S. government and recently announced $33 million from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to invest in more deminers and new cutting-edge technology to expedite clearance rates.

This is just a start, though, given the massive size of the damage. By point of comparison: The Korean demilitarized zone landmines stretch across 150 miles, where’s Russia’s current defensive line covers about 500 miles. It will take decades to restore the soil to its productive pre-war state, unless the world steps up.

I am proud that the U.S. has pledged more military aid to Ukraine than any other single country — $44.2 billion-worth since Russia launched the war in February 2022. That assistance includes substantial sums for demining efforts. When he visited Kyiv in September, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that this assistance would “[help] communities recover and rebuild.”

But the World Bank estimates that demining Ukraine will cost $37.4 billion over the next 10 years. In September, the Biden administration called for nearly $100 million in additional funding for demining efforts in Ukraine. As Congress debates further assistance to Ukraine, this is a worthy investment that would save countless lives and allow crops throughout the country to flourish once again.

The cost of aiding Ukraine has become a hot-button topic across America’s ideological spectrum. But ridding the Ukrainian landscape of landmines and buried ordnance is a type of aid that we all can and should unite around.

John Jameson is the president and founder of Winning Connections, a national direct voter contact firm that works for advocacy groups, associations and Democratic candidates. He voluntarily serves as a global ambassador for The Halo Trust, a nonprofit global mine-clearing organization.