FILE PHOTO: A demining device, mounted on an excavator and capable of detonating anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, is tested, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine August 12, 2023. REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi/File Photo
KYIV (Reuters) - The Netherlands will send Ukraine a thousand chargers for remote demining, Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren said on a visit to Kyiv.
The announcement coincides with heavily mined Russian defence lines slowing down a Ukrainian counteroffensive to recapture territory seized by Russia since its forces invaded in February 2022.
"There is a decision to provide about a thousand portable chargers for remote demining that can make passageways in engineered barriers," Ollongren was quoted as saying on the Ukrainian defence ministry website at a meeting with Ukrainian minister Oleksiy Reznikov on Tuesday.
"Now, as I know, you are facing the problem of extremely dense mining of territories," she said.
Earlier on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that helping Ukraine to get across a massive land mine belt can become a joint effort by Germany and other partners.
(Reporting by Nick Starkov in Kyiv, writing by Maria Tsvetkova in New York; editing by Grant McCool)
