Czech and Slovak de-mining system arrives in Kharkiv, Ukraine
The Božena 5 de-mining system has been brought to the Kharkiv region by members of the Czech association, Team4Ukraine. The money for it was raised by Czech and Slovak organizations, led by the “Gift for Putin” initiative, in a public collection.
Božena 5 was brought by volunteers to a secret base near Kharkiv from Košice, Slovakia. Together with Božena 5, the rescuers received a tractor, a trailer, a special van with a thousand-litre fuel tank, and a drone with thermal imaging, worth over 15 million crowns in total. The process, from raising the money to delivering the equipment to the firefighters who will be using it, took 17 months.
The Ukrainian firefighters are trained in how the Božena 5 operates by members of the Team4Ukraine association, who learned it from the manufacturer. Team4Ukraine Chairman Jan Heřmánek commented for Czech Radio from the ground, in Kharkiv:
“We are currently in Ukraine in the receiving facilities in Kharkiv which serves primarily to teach new operators. As of now, there are a lot of operators who drive around Ukraine and demine different regions composed primarily of civilians.”
The Božena 5 has a two-and-a-half-metre-wide ploughshare called a rotary flail, which it uses to detonate landmines. It is self-propelled and the manufacturer says it can be operated from a distance of up to five kilometers and is resistant to a blast of up to 9 kilograms of trinitrotoluene (TNT).
The United Nations reports that Ukraine presently has the most landmines in the world. Up to 23 percent of the territory is contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance.
Small donors from Czechia and Slovakia contributed to Božena 5, but 100,000 euros (equivalent to 2.5 million crowns) were added by Taiwan, which regularly supports Ukraine through third countries and third parties. Božena 5 was manufactured by the Slovak company Way Industries.
Another reason, according to Martin Ondráček, a representative of the Gift for Putin initiative, was the slow start of the collection in Slovakia. But Ondráček considers the main problem to be the actions of the Slovak authorities.
"We waited several months for export documents and permission to travel from Košice to the Ukrainian border, because Božena 5 is considered military material. It took so long that we have a real suspicion that the Slovak side was dragging it out in an attempt to delay it as much as possible."
