Global landmine charity MAG (The Mines Advisory Group) awarded $9.8 million to support mine clearance work in Ukraine with partner organisation APOPO
All photos by Howard G. Buffett
Kyiv, Ukraine – 6 August 2025 – New teams of specialist landmine detection dogs have been deployed in Ukraine thanks to a $9.8m grant from one of the world’s largest philanthropic organizations.
The Howard G. Buffett Foundation is funding teams of highly trained dogs and their handlers, plus accompanying teams of deminers, in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv areas of Ukraine.
The teams began working on July 10 and will play a major role in accelerating the survey of thousands of acres of land, enabling its return to productive agricultural use and ensuring the safety of communities affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion. Additional teams will start work next year.
The deminers and dogs – known as Technical Survey Dogs (TSDs) – will work alongside a community liaison team also being funded by the Foundation. Together, they expect to survey more than 1,300 acres of land during the course of the project.
They will determine what land can be used safely for farming and ensure any landmines or items of explosive ordnance found are destroyed.
Among the team members are war veterans, who were made aware of this opportunity by another partner of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation: the Superhumans Centre, a state-of-the-art Ukrainian prosthetics and rehabilitation clinic, which supports discharged military personnel and civilians.
Howard G. Buffett, Chairman and CEO of the Foundation, said: “The demining need in Ukraine is so great that it will require innovative approaches to save lives and accelerate the return of Ukrainian agricultural land to production. We look forward to piloting this technique in Ukraine in partnership with MAG and APOPO.”
Jon Cunliffe, Country Director for MAG Ukraine, said: “We are deeply grateful to the Howard G. Buffett Foundation for joining us in our mission to make Ukraine safer. This collaboration not only strengthens our capacity on the ground but also highlights the power of innovation in humanitarian demining.
“Right now, Ukraine is the most mined country in the world and it is critical that we develop innovative solutions to prevent death and injury for local people and to re-establish and recover safe land for productive agricultural use.”
APOPO Ukraine Programme Manager Nick Guest said: “With the generous support of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, we are proud to scale up our innovative use of Animal Detection Systems in Ukraine. Our highly trained dogs offer a fast, effective, and scalable solution to accelerate land release, protect communities and save lives."
The Howard G. Buffett Foundation support will enable MAG and APOPO to expand the use of the Technical Survey Dogs, which are able to significantly increase the speed at which safe land can be released for local communities, and landmines and other explosive items can be detected, removed and destroyed.
Thousands of acres of Ukrainian farmland remain unsafe due to landmines and unexploded ordnance. Before the Russian invasion in 2022, agriculture played a key role in Ukraine’s economy. In 2021, agriculture accounted for 10% of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Ukraine possesses some of the most fertile soils in the world, accounting for 25–30% of the global rich black soil reserves and over 100 million acres of arable land. At the same time, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), around 400 million people worldwide rely on Ukrainian agricultural production for food security.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About the Howard G. Buffett Foundation https://www.thehowardgbuffettfoundation.org/
The Howard G. Buffett Foundation, established in 1999, is a U.S. private family foundation working to improve food security, mitigate conflict, and enhance public safety. The Foundation’s work in Ukraine began in 2022 shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion and is focused on addressing the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II. The Foundation has committed more than $1 billion to Ukraine since 2022, including over $164M to support humanitarian demining efforts.
About MAG https://maginternational.org
The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) is a global humanitarian and advocacy organisation that finds, removes and destroys landmines, cluster munitions and unexploded bombs from places affected by conflict.
MAG also provides education programmes, particularly for children, so people can live, work and play as safely as possible until they clear the land. The organisation also delivers work to reduce armed violence by educating people about the risks of small arms and light weapons and by destroying and marking weapons and helping authorities to safely store arms and ammunition.
Since 1989, MAG has helped over 23 million people in 70 countries rebuild their lives after war. In 1997, MAG shared the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in banning landmines.
MAG’s programme in Ukraine was established in 2022. Its teams conduct clearance, survey and explosive ordnance risk education (EORE) sessions for communities in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions.
About APOPO https://apopo.org
APOPO is a global non-profit organization with over two decades of experience and expertise in the practical application of animal detection systems for landmines and explosives. Founded in 1997, APOPO initially developed and now deploys Mine Detection Rats (MDR) for clearance of mines and explosives and since 2017 has invested in a specialized mine detection dog training center that deploys dogs for unique technical survey roles - Technical Survey Dogs (TSD). This multi-faceted capacity has made APOPO an Industry leader in researching, training, and deploying animals for clearance of landmines and unexploded ordnance. APOPO also plays an important advisory role in developing internationally accepted standards for Animal Detection Systems within the mine action industry.
APOPO’s animals have saved thousands of lives by efficiently surveying, clearing and returning nearly 170 million sqm of previously unusable land, and contributing to the safe disposal of over 170,000 landmines and items of Explosive Ordnance (EO).
The organization currently has over 300 working dogs and rats, including 70 mine detection dogs, working across Africa, and Asia, making it the largest supplier of mine detection dogs in the world.
Media enquiries:
MAG: press@maginternational.org
APOPO: Lily Shallom lily.shallom@apopo.org +255 784 490 979
