Ukraine’s Minefields Also Feed the Crooks

Ukraine is the most mined country in the world, which makes humanitarian demining essential — and, as this case shows, dangerously easy to turn into a cash machine. Prosecutors say suspects in Kherson allegedly created fake danger by digging up soil and planting shell-like objects on already safe land, then billed the state for the theater.

That is the ugliest part of war economies: when real suffering creates a budget line, somebody always tries to monetize the illusion of danger. In Kherson alone, officials say the damage may be 6.3 million hryvnias, with prosecutors checking similar cases in Mykolaiv and Chernihiv.

The scale matters because the problem is real. UN agencies and humanitarian groups have warned that Ukraine remains the world’s most heavily mined country, with around 139,000 square kilometers contaminated or potentially contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance.

So this is not a story about one rotten crew only. It is a warning that a huge national necessity, under wartime pressure, creates a perfect habitat for fraud — unless oversight is brutal enough to catch it before the crooks start billing the country for their own dirt piles.

#Ukraine #corruption #demining #Kherson #war

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