"Mine-clearing operations in Moldova"
Wilder Alejandro Sanchez
DefenceIQ
September 24, 2020
Originally published: https://www.defenceiq.com/army-land-forces/case-studies/mine-clearing-operations-in-moldova
The Republic of Moldova continues to be affected by its past. Specifically, World War II-era mines, artillery shells and other unexploded ordnance continue to litter the European nation’s territory, creating a constant danger to the Moldovan population that, unfortunately, has claimed a number of innocent lives.
Thus, one of the Moldovan military’s most important daily operations is to locate and remove these ancient, but still deadly, weapons from its territory.
The problem
It is unclear exactly how much unexploded ordnance remains buried beneath Moldovan land. Via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union created spheres of influence in Eastern Europe – an agreement that Berlin would later break via the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Specifically, thanks to the Pact, Moscow gained control of parts of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, which became the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Hertza region, given to Ukraine. After Operation Barbarrosa (Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union) commenced, the Axis-aligned Romania, regained control of Bessarabia, until Soviet troops returned in 1944. It was during this period of the war, particularly the Red Army’s return to the region, that most of this military equipment was littered across the territory.
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