At the end of February, I visited Syria as part of a delegation from the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine. We are working on strengthening Ukraine’s engagement with the region, and this trip was an opportunity to continue the dialogue that began in the autumn, when Syria’s Minister of Emergency Situations and Disaster Management, Raed al-Saleh, and the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, Amjad Badr, took part in the international food security conference Food from Ukraine.
For Ukraine, the countries of the Middle East are an important and promising direction of cooperation – not only because they offer opportunities to strengthen our presence in the region and expand trade and economic relations. It is also a chance to play an important role in restoring safety in Syria through mine action. Damascus is only beginning to build its humanitarian demining system, and this is an area where Ukraine has significant expertise and is ready to share it.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
When we were planning the trip, I generally understood what a country devastated by war for decades might look like: mass bombings, the use of chemical weapons. Yet when you arrive in the suburbs of Damascus, where about 90 percent of the area has been wiped off the map, it is still a very painful sight. But the risks these ruins pose to civilians are even greater: unexploded ordnance, mines and cluster munitions continue to take lives even after hostilities end. In total, more than 2,000 incidents involving explosive hazards were recorded in Syria over the past year. Around 60 percent of them occur in agricultural fields. For comparison, in Ukraine, more than 1,000 such incidents have been recorded since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
Other Topics of Interest
