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Five-months secret mission of Polish sappers finishes in Ukraine
KYIV. Feb 23 (Interfax-Ukraine) – On Wednesday, a group of sappers returned to Poland after a five-month mission in Ukraine to clear of mines the occupied territory, the Polish edition of Wirtualna Polska reports.
“For five months, 98 Polish policemen participated in a top-secret mission in Ukraine. They were engaged in mine clearance of the areas from which the Russians left,” Wirtualna Polska said.
According to the publication, the mission began after Ukraine’s appeal last year to members of the ATLAS group, a police task force uniting special anti-terrorist units of the European Union.
The request concerned the dispatch of pyrotechnics to Ukraine to clear the occupied territories of the country of mines. “There are not enough sappers in the Ukrainian army, and military sappers from NATO countries cannot do this, because it will be perceived by Russia as a provocation. The only option was to send police pyrotechnics,” the ezine says.
In the summer of 2022, a Humanitarian police contingent was created in Poland, consisting of officers of separate counter-terrorism police units. Only volunteers went to Ukraine. A group of 98 specialists (sappers, paramedics, members of combat teams to protect the mission and two dogs) arrived in the country with their equipment in early October. Initially, the mission was supposed to last three months, but in December it was extended for another two.
In total, the Humanitarian Mission cleared more than 342,000 square meters of territories and more than 17,500 square meters of roads, including the airport near Kyiv [probably Hostomel], de-occupied territories of Kyiv region and districts of Dnipro.
