Meet the beautiful bomb squad mum of one who is cleaning Ukraine of Russian mines.
Yaroslavna Garmash, inspector of the explosives technical service of the police of Sumy Oblast, Ukraine, used to be an investigator but started working with the bomb squad in July last year.
The footage shows her sweeping for a mine in the snow before discovering it and carefully neutralising it.
The images also show the detonation of a large, unexploded Russian missile, Garmash working out and staying fit and teaching children about the dangers of mines.
Newsflash obtained a statement from the National Police of Ukraine dated 9th February saying: “A policewoman frees our country from Russian landmines, defuses unexploded ordnance and explosive objects. She often has to perform tasks under fire.”
The statement said: “During the full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the police force radically changed its field of activity.”
She diffused her first bomb in the Okhtyr district of the Sumy region after a lorry driver came off a road and discovered a mine while digging his vehicle out.
Garmash is quoted as saying: “This event is well etched in my memory, because it was my first experience of independent work, when I opened my first mine and successfully neutralised it.”
She also recalled neutralising an unexploded Russian Kh-32 cruise missile which had fallen on a field near one of the villages in the Sumy district and had not exploded.
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She said: “The rocket fell apart from the impact, the fuel from it burned out, but the warhead, which weighs about 700 kilogrammes, did not explode, but entered the ground.
“To get it, we had to use special equipment. After the detonation of the explosive object, a huge gap appeared in the ground, and the debris flew over a distance of more than half a kilometre.
“I had never seen such a powerful explosion during my work.”
She said the hardest part is seeing people’s grief during her work.
She said: “After artillery shelling, rocket attacks, Shahed strikes, when people lose not only their property, which they have worked for for years, but when people lose their loved ones. This is the hardest.”
Garmash also runs a class for children and adults to teach them about mine safety.
The police officer, herself a mother, said: “It is very important to inform people about the threat that explosive objects can pose. The Sumy region is a border region, the territory of which is bombarded by the occupiers with various types of weapons every day.
“Unfortunately, there are often cases when children or adults, having discovered a suspicious object, begin to interact with it in some way, which leads to its detonation.”
