In 2023, Ukrainian farmers resumed work on 208,000 hectares of demined land, the capabilities of the State Emergency Service and the State Special Transport Service of Ukraine were improved, the development of domestic mine clearance machinery and equipment production began, a pool of international donors was formed to help Ukraine in mine action, First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who is also the Economy Minister of Ukraine, has said.

"We started the year 2023 with not very comforting numbers: no heavy mine clearance vehicles, six mine action operators, 1,500 deminers. We started the new year with almost 30 vehicles, 26 operators and more than 3,000 deminers. And also, with assurances from partners about their readiness to invest almost half a billion euros in humanitarian demining of Ukraine. Some partner countries and international organizations have already begun to allocate these funds," the press service of the Economy Ministry quoted Svyrydenko, who summed up the work on the country's mine action in 2023.

According to her, if at the beginning of 2023 some 174,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territories were considered potentially dangerous, today, as a result of mine action operations, some 156,000 square kilometers remain hazardous. That is, 18,000 square kilometers of fields, forests, and water areas have been returned to use thanks to the work of specialists.

Svyrydenko focused on returning priority agricultural land to demining for economic use.

"Over the year, sappers from the State Emergency Service, the State Special Transport Service and private operators examined 274,000 hectares of agricultural land – 58% of what was envisaged by the four-year plan. Some 208,000 hectares of them have already been transferred for use to farmers. If we take the national average wheat yield in 2023 as an example, then almost 1 million tonnes grains can be grown on the returned lands," the minister said.

According to her calculations, grain grown in this territory and sold on foreign markets, at prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), can bring the country more than $225 million (UAH 8.4 billion), or approximately 750,000 tonnes of flour if the grain is processed in Ukraine, or about 6 million loaves on store shelves every day throughout the year. If sunflowers were planted on cleared lands, domestic producers could make approximately 266 million 850 milliliter bottles of oil from the harvested seeds.

Svyrydenko also reported that in 2023, farmers were already growing various crops on the lands returned to economic use.

"Last year we again had Kherson watermelons, Mykolaiv tomatoes and peppers on our tables. Priority demining of vegetable growing lands made it possible to ensure domestic consumption of vegetables. And the kutia or crumpets that we ate on Christmas were probably made from wheat grown in mine-free areas lands of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv or Sumy region. First of all, we are grateful for this to the sappers of the State Emergency Service, the State Special Transport Service, Ukrainian and international non-governmental operators," Svyrydenko said.

In addition, the minister announced the goal set by the Cabinet of Ministers – to return 80% of potentially mined areas to use within ten years. For this purpose, the National Mine Action Strategy was developed in 2023 and is at the final stage of approval, and proposals are being developed to update the law on mine action in Ukraine.