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Ukraine plants 500,000 mines along border with Russia, Belarus — retired officer

They have already been planted in the Volyn, Rovno, Zhitomir, and Kiev Regions, Vladislav Seleznev said

MOSCOW, November 12. /TASS/. Ukrainian troops have planted some half a million mines in the country’s for regions bordering Russia and Belarus, Vladislav Seleznev, a former spokesman for the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said on Sunday.

"As many as 500,000 mines have already been planted in the Volyn, Rovno, Zhitomir, and Kiev Regions. And more are needed," he said in an interview with the Ukrainian TSN agency.

On June 30, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky ordered to reinforce troops on border with Belarus. In July, commander of the North battlegroup of the Ukrainian army, Sergey Nayev, said that the military was reinforcing position and engineering structures in the Volyn, Zhitomir, and Rovno Regions and is mining approaches to them. In October, he said that the density of mine defense had increased by 16 times as compared with June 2022.

Meanwhile, Ruslan Girilyuk, head of the Belarusian army’s mine action center, said that mine clearing operation in Ukrainian territory along the border with Belarus would take a long time.