The mine expert: Have met hundreds that have been killed

Ukraine
Swedish mine expert: "I have met hundreds of soldiers who have since been killed"

Peter Kadhammar

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

Published 13.05

Dalle trains units that are familiar with combat. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

A man sits in  a cafe in Stockholm. He drinks black brewed coffee and eats cinnamon rolls.

He is called Dalle and is a mini-instructor. For a total of 14 months, he has been in Ukraine and met hundreds of soldiers who have since been killed. He stops and thinks.

- Yes, hundreds.

He looks like any other man in his 30s with a beard and bulging muscles under his t-shirt. He could work at an advertising agency or as an organizational consultant.

But a sudden nightmare has befallen us all.

An entire continent thought it lived in peace. People did what people do in peace. Suddenly thousands and thousands of young men, women, children die from bullets, grenades, mines, bombs from drones, suicide drones, glide bombs, robots. Mostly young men.

Dalle trains units that are familiar with combat.

- Some have been involved since it started. Most of their friends are gone.

He takes a bite of the cinnamon roll with pearl sugar on it. The cafe is slowly filling up. Some tourists. Students placing books and computers on the small tables. Men and women who have a moment to spare before a meeting, before the train leaves.

Dalle has ten years as a professional soldier behind him. He got hooked on mines after a course in Eksjö. Minors are demanding. Interesting. The technology is constantly developing.

What he encountered in Ukraine has nothing in common with the education he received in Sweden.

- The risk acceptance is completely insane. What the soldiers are expected to do is incredibly different from what the Swedish Armed Forces would expect from me. We would never attack through a mined area without flank protection and tremendous mine clearance skills. The Ukrainians do.
The Russians launch small timed mines that spread over large areas. The aim is for the troops defending the ground to withdraw, because they do not know when the mines will explode. They explode, for example, 27 hours later and then the attackers enter the abandoned area.

It is an implicit choreography for a war between Russia and the countries of the West.

But the Ukrainians persist.

It's buzzing in the cafe. The door to the street is open, the traffic noise penetrates.

- All hope for a quick victory is blown away, people are tired. But they don't want to give up. They...accept their fate.

"The risk acceptance is completely insane," says Dalle about the war in Ukraine. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

Pressure, wire, magnetism, vibrations. Those are the usual ways to trigger a mine. Technology develops incredibly fast in war. As always. There are new technologies that Dalle is not allowed to talk about.

Ideally, each soldier should receive a simple piece of protective equipment. A fiberglass pick to find what is hidden in the ground. At the beginning of the war they used their cleaning rods for the automatic carbines. But now the mines can explode on contact with metal.

The simple equipment with some marking flags and cloth bags and a pike costs SEK 250 per soldier. Dalle speaks warmly of some ladies in Norway who sew cloth bags that can be filled with earth and which you can pull across the ground with a long rope and possibly cause a mine to explode.

He speaks warmly of the Swedish network Wild Bees, which uses 3D printers to manufacture mine traps, which he uses in teaching the young soldiers.

- Unfortunately, there are fewer on the courses now. The units do not have time to send soldiers for training. They are needed at the front, they are so heavily employed.

Dalle shares a house with some other volunteers outside Kramatorsk in Donbass. A Swede, a Brit. In a week a German will arrive.

- I like Kramatorsk. There are many nice restaurants there. Sometimes, of course, it clicks.

Once he was involved in shelling for 29 hours straight. It was hard, he says. Then he was ashamed. The Ukrainian soldiers have been through so much worse.

The volunteers relax with games. There has been a card game based on the characters in the Star Wars movies.

But mostly they work. Dalle has over 500 mine traps to keep track of.

He receives no salary, lives on savings. The courses are half financed by donors in Sweden.

Soon he goes back to the war.

- Ukraine defends all of Europe. It is a battle for our future.

He lifts his heavy bag and goes out into the street where the people of Stockholm are happy that the heat is back. Under the signature Sweod on social media, he talks about his deed in the war.