His fields peppered with Russian shells, Ukrainian farmer Vitaliy Sydor has resorted to desperate measures to clear explosives from the land himself so he can plant crops. “I bought metal detectors and had a bit of a look on the Internet,” said Sydor, 28. He had no protective equipment, he admitted, and relies on a friend with army experience. His village, Novogrygorivka, in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, was within sight of the Russian front line and heavily bombarded from March to November last year until the Russians retreated. The landscape is littered with splintered trees, shattered houses and burnt-out vehicles. “Wherever you look there are holes,” said Sydor, indicating the shattered outbuildings and machinery. The house built by his father and grandfather is just a heap of rubble. With some of Ukraine’s best agricultural land, this region is crucial to the harvest, and farmers need to earn money after losing last year’s crops. International demining organisations and military and police sappers are out in force, but the area is vast and some farmers, needing to recoup huge losses, are taking clearance into their own hands. “You can wait a long time. No one knows when they will come and demine everything,” said Sydor, adding that he exchanges information online with other farmers on finding munitions. An estimated half of Mykolaiv region’s agricultural land will go unused this year “due to contamination or fear of contamination”, said Jasmine Dann, regional operations manager for The HALO Trust, which is working in the region. But Sydor’s do-it-yourself approach carries “very big risks”, she said. “There is not only the risk that something will be missed but also that the mines might be booby trapped,” she warned. “Other explosives can be very unstable and explode if tampered with.”