A new human-made landscape is taking shape along the contact zone, saturated with everything imaginable: debris, mines, unexploded munitions and toxic waste.
Fibre-optic cables from drones are also on that list. Millions of kilometres of thin cables are littering Ukrainian land and creating a new challenge for humanitarian mine clearance teams.
Halting the use of fibre-optic drones for the sake of "environmental friendliness" would be absurd, but mine clearance experts are already assessing the risks they will face when attempting to carry out humanitarian demining in contaminated areas.
Meanwhile, for farmers the uncertainty is growing: it is impossible to conduct research in the fields or predict how events may unfold after the liberation of territories or the end of hostilities as this problem is new.
Ukrainska Pravda explains what humanitarian demining teams and farmers may face as they try to clear the land.
A challenge the world has never seen before
Fibre-optic cable is an extremely thin glass strand made of silicon, 0.2-0.5 mm thick. It is often covered with a protective polymer sheath. It was designed to be as strong and durable as possible: it does not rust, decomposes slowly and can remain in the soil for a very long time.
When a fibre-optic drone takes off, the spool gradually releases a thin, almost invisible wire. It trails behind the drone throughout the flight and settles absolutely everywhere. When the drone explodes, the fibre-optic cable does not disappear; it continues to exist in Ukrainian fields and forests.
Based on open-source figures for the supply of fibre-optic drones, Ukrainians and Russians use at least 100,000 such UAVs every month. The length of cable on a single spool can exceed 10 kilometres. In other words, millions of kilometres of fibre-optic threads are now covering Ukrainian territory.
At first, fibre-optic threads accumulate in the combat zone. Then the abandoned wires spread beyond it, settling in the soil or hanging from trees.
As drone technology develops, both the length of fibre-optic cable and the number of drones are increasing, meaning the area of contamination and the amount of fibre in soils and forests will inevitably grow. A spike in fibre-optic cable prices may somewhat slow the process, but it is unlikely to change the overall trend towards the use of this technology.
Fibre-optic cable poses more of a mechanical threat than a toxic one. A vivid and painful example is its impact on animals and birds. Some are cut by it, while others become entangled in cables they cannot even break. The result is a blow to the ecosystem.
But the main problem here is not even the birds.The issue is that it is a new type of war waste, and it is still unclear how to deal with it.
An obstacle to humanitarian demining
Edward Crowther, a mine action specialist with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine, told Ukrainska Pravda that the greatest challenges for mine clearance experts will be safety and visibility in the field.
The first problem is that long cables lying in the grass or hanging in bushes and between trees may become tangled up with ammunition. An unexploded drone may even be lying at the end of the wire. If these strands are pulled, it could trigger an explosion or start a large fire.
In addition, fibre-optic cable resembles a tripwire. Mine-clearance personnel will have to check every single strand, which will slow their work enormously.
According to the rules, anything that limits access to the soil, including vegetation, must be removed before demining begins. But strands of fibre-optic cable will have to be pulled out along with the grass. Simply yanking them out is too dangerous. Separate methods of removal will need to be considered, either manually or using machinery.
It cannot be ruled out that invisible, sturdy wires could become wound around parts of mechanical demining machines. In that case, the machinery would have to be stopped, cleaned and possibly repaired.
Another problem concerns drones used to survey and map areas. fibre-optic cable hangs between trees, above buildings or in bushes, sometimes forming an invisible net. A drone may catch its propeller on it and fall.
Once fibre-optic cable penetrates the layers of soil, metal detectors, of course, will not be able to detect it. That means another technological solution will have to be found.
A significant share of the territory near the contact zone will remain dangerous for a long time, so there will simply be no opportunity to remove the fibre-optic cable there. This means it will lie there for years, gradually mixing with the soil or becoming overgrown by forest.
A potential problem for farmers
Farmers, meanwhile, still do not have enough evidence for a substantive discussion about exactly how fibre-optic cable will affect their work. For now, it is impossible either to study or to predict this.
Oleh Khomenko, Director General of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club, told Ukrainska Pravda that contaminated land is unlikely to return to cultivation in the next 10 years. So it is too early to speak of an impact on yields: first, it will be necessary to understand which crops, if any, can take root on such land.
For now, fibre-optic cable is not regarded as a separate type of pollutant, as it blends into a wider "bouquet" of hazards: soil degradation, crop losses and explosive ordnance. That is why there are currently no public complaints from farmers specifically about fibre-optic cable, as the Ukrainian Professional Association of Environmentalists of the World (PAEW) explained to Ukrainska Pravda.
But sooner or later, the issue of clearing these areas will arise. PAEW Vice-President Valentyn Shcherbyna believes that monitoring must be launched and methods developed to detect and control fibre-optic cable in order to address the problem.
For these steps to be implemented fully and systematically, they need to be enshrined in regulation. The first step would be to officially recognise fibre-optic cable as a separate type of war-related contamination.
Humanitarian mine clearance is a task that will take decades, so action must begin as early as possible. There is always room for technological innovation in this field. Perhaps, in time, Ukrainian mine-clearance specialists, engineers or scientists will find an effective way to study this problem and produce a ready-made solution to overcome it.
Translated by Viktoriia Yurchenko
Edited by Susan McDonald