Mines on border with Crimea checked nine days before invasion, records still available
Military personnel of the Armed Forces have kept a log of landmine inspections on the Crimean Isthmus, and the last inspections took place on 15 February 2022, nine days before the full-scale Russian invasion began.
Source: Ukrainska Pravda (UP) article "How the Armed Forces of Ukraine prepared the south for defence, laid mines in Chonhar and fought for Kherson Oblast. Reconstruction"
Details: UP contacted military personnel who assured them that no one had removed the mines laid in 2014-2015 from the bridges on the isthmuses. And if this had been done, then records of such actions would definitely remain in military reports and orders.
The mines themselves were recorded on the official forms of units serving on the administrative border with occupied Crimea. All devices and power networks were checked twice a month. Every first and third week of the month, bomb disposal experts would go to the Kherson front, and every second and fourth week to the Melitopol front.
The 808th Separate Support Regiment kept a separate logbook for checking the condition of mine barriers. It did not just record the dates of inspections. The people who carried out these inspections put their names and signatures there.
If they saw any malfunctions, they also had to record it in the logbook. The bomb disposal experts who conducted these reported no such cases.
On 15 February 2022, bomb disposal experts conducted the last mine inspection. As always, they signed the logbook.
The original of this log has been preserved. UP writes that a copy of it was handed over to the official investigation team in 2022.
Read more on this story: Reconstructing chronology of how Ukraine's Armed Forces prepared to defend the south, mined Chonhar and fought for Kherson Oblast
Background: Major General Andrii Sokolov, who at the beginning of the invasion was Deputy Commander of Operational Command Pivden (South) and was in charge of the Pivden grouping of troops, said that the bridges to Crimea in Chonhar had been mined since 2014, but they had not been blown up at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A soldier who served on the border with Crimea on 24 February 2022, also told how he tried to blow up the bridges on Chonhar.
Major General Andrii Sokolov was in charge of the defence of Ukraine's south. An interview covering Chonhar, Kherson and Melitopol
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