Intentionally or not, Russian forces in Ukraine have left behind thousands of dangerous—and potentially lethal—explosive devices, scattering a variety of them across the country. Those include land mines, soda-can-sized submunitions, enormous aircraft bombs, and ordinary objects booby-trapped with explosives. All of these pose an extreme risk to civilians and the Ukrainian military, alike; specialists will have to safely dismantle the weapons, and the effort will likely take years.
Explosive devices are an essential part of modern warfare. Today’s armies deploy a dizzying array of military explosives, from hand grenades to aircraft bombs. Some, like aircraft bombs, are designed to kill the enemy; others, like minefields, are designed to slow the enemy down or draw them into an ambush. Some explosives are so large they’re meant to destroy tanks, while others are so small that they hide in plain sight, maiming anyone crossing their path.
Ukrainian forces pursuing Russian forces in the northwest have run into landmines and booby traps, and fighters in the east have, too. Meanwhile, engineers in Ukrainian cities have already removed unexploded, 1,000-pound bombs from buildings. Bomblets—or small bombs, usually ejected in clusters—dispensed from rockets and missiles have already killed civilians, while unexploded bomblets continue to lay in waiting for an unwitting person to stumble upon them.
It’s worth noting that many of the weapons Russia has used, including land mines and submunitions, have been the subject of international bans.
Mines
Land mines first came to prominence during World War II. A land mine is typically made up of a wooden, plastic, or metal body; a pressure plate and detonator; and a small amount of high explosives. As weight is applied to the pressure plate, it triggers the detonator, which in turn triggers the explosive charge. Contrary to popular belief, minefields are not designed to destroy the enemy. Rather, they’re meant to slow down an enemy force, or compel the enemy to choose a different route—often one leading right into an ambush.
Land mines come in two varieties: anti-personnel (AP) and anti-tank (AT). The weight of a human being usually triggers AP mines. Some “bounce” to waist height before exploding, allowing the explosion to clear any obstacles and detonate unobstructed among enemy troops. Others include a timed delay to catch the main body of a column of enemy troops. AT mines are much larger, incorporating a bigger explosive charge, and require several hundred pounds of pressure to ensure the blast isn’t wasted on a single soldier.
Land mines are traditionally laid by hand, but a new generation is laid by aircraft bombs and vehicle-mounted mine-dispersal devices. The Russian POM-3 is a tube-shaped mine that is released in large numbers from an airborne container, the mine’s descent slowed by parachute. As the mine lands, it buries a seismic sensor in the ground underneath. The seismic sensor listens for the approach of a human being, and once the mine detects the presence of a person, it explodes at waist level. The charge has a killing radius of 17 yards, according to CAT-UXO, a website that collates info on explosive ordnance disposal. Land mines will also randomly explode at eight- or 24-hour intervals. All of this makes the POM-3 extremely difficult to approach and successfully disarm.
More than 150 countries worldwide have joined together to ban the use of land mines. And back in March, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munition Coalition (ICBL-CMC) noted in a press statement that it “strongly condemns the use of internationally-banned antipersonnel landmines by Russian forces in the Ukraine conflict.”
“Use of antipersonnel landmines by Russian armed forces in Ukraine and anywhere, is unacceptable. These indiscriminate weapons kill civilians and leave a terrible legacy of suffering for years to come,” ICBL-CMC Director Hector Guerra says in the statement. “We call for an immediate halt to all use, and for the 164 members of the Mine Ban Treaty to speak up and condemn this action.” Ukraine one of the 150 countries included in the Mine Ban Treaty, Russia and the United States currently remain outside it.
Aircraft Bombs
Russian Su-30M fighters and Su-25 attack aircraft have flown combat missions in Ukraine since the start of the war, dropping ordnance on both military and civilian positions, alike. Regardless of whether the bombs explode or not, the weapons pose a grave danger not only to individuals, but whole communities.
Russia has dropped a variety of aircraft bombs on Ukraine, including “smart” bombs like the KAB-500L-F laser-guided bomb, and unguided FAB-500M-62 “dumb” bombs. Most Russian aircraft bombs are in the 500-kilogram (1,102-pound) category, with the largest in the 1,500-kilogram (3,306-pound) weight class.
Aircraft bombs are easier to disarm in general, but the overall risk during the disposal process is much greater. The bombardment of civilian areas has also meant that some unexploded bombs have been found lodged in multi-story buildings, where removal might be difficult … or even impossible. Bombs falling from the air at high speed might bury themselves in swamps or soft soil, resulting in hidden hazards to civilians.
Submunitions
In the 1960s, the U.S. military fielded the first generation of so-called “cluster bombs,” or aircraft bombs that were filled with smaller, baseball-sized bomblets instead of delivering a unitary high-explosive warhead. Cluster bombs were designed to release their so-called “submunitions” over the target, raining them down in clusters, resulting in dozens of smaller explosions, rather than one large one. Instead of one large bomb, whose explosive effect is reduced with distance, cluster bombs use many smaller bomblets, also called submunitions, to ensure explosive effects are more evenly dispersed over wider area.
Submunitions are in theory no less humane than regular bombs. In practice, however, a significant number of bomblets will fail to explode, particularly in combat conditions. These submunitions—up to 30 percent of a cluster bomb’s payload—will then litter the battlefield, putting military personnel and civilians, alike, in peril. Submunitions, as well as the bombs that deploy them over the battlefield, have been discovered at sites of civilian deaths; the Russian attack on Kramatorsk train station, for instance, which resulted in the deaths of more than 50 civilians, involved a Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile that dispensed 9N123K submunitions among Ukrainian refugees.
The United Nations-organized Convention on Cluster Munitions, signed by 110 countries, prohibits the use of submunitions as weapons of war. Russia is not a signatory to the treaty. Neither is the United States, but it no longer uses submunitions, and has taken steps to eliminate existing cluster munitions in its inventory.
Booby Traps
An improvised use of explosives on the modern battlefield is the practice of laying out booby traps. Booby traps involve using military explosives—such as land mines, hand grenades, and rockets—to make improvised explosive devices triggered by movement. The purpose is to slow down the advance of enemy troops, forcing them to look for hidden dangers.
Booby traps are typically made by wiring explosives to a primitive sensor. In some cases, the “sensor” is just a tripwire, like in the illustration above from a Russian military engineering manual. In the image, a Russian POM-Z2M land mine is armed via tripwire. Once tripped, the mine explodes, throwing lethal fragments up to 30 feet. The tripwire configuration means it could be used to boobytrap doorways, staircases, and other pass throughs that both soldiers and civilians use. Other Russian grenades, such as the F-1 hand grenade, are built to be quickly turned into booby traps.
In addition to tripwires, booby traps can also use improvised pressure plates, similar to those used on land mines. Booby traps can be laid near ammunition crates, medical supplies, food, and other desirables. A pressure plate could be laid near an ammunition crate, as seen in the image at the top of this story, with an electrical current provided by a car battery. Once the plate is stepped on, a circuit is completed and a nearby explosive detonates—killing or injuring anyone nearby.
Currently, there are no efforts from the international community to curb the use of booby traps, likely because their ad-hoc use makes it difficult to actually ban them.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will end, one way or another, leaving thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of unexploded weapons littering the country. Deaths and injuries will continue to add up even in peacetime; in Vietnam, for instance, 40,000 people have been killed or wounded by unexploded ordnance since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Unexploded weapons are also a problem in wider Southeast Asia, including Laos and Vietnam, and were a threat to public safety in regions as diverse as the Balkans, Kurdistan, and southern Africa.
The longer this war lasts, the greater the problem—and the longer it will take for Ukraine to become safe again.
