Picture a wheat field in Kherson, Ukraine. One square kilometer of farmland that, before the war, generated $4 million in annual exports. Somewhere in that field are roughly 200 PFM-1 “butterfly mines” - each the size of your palm, designed to injure rather than kill. A traditional demining team would take 40 days to clear it using metal detectors and manual prodding.
Ukraine has 144,000 km2 of contaminated land. At current clearance rates, it would take 57 years. At traditional costs of €1-3 per square meter, the bill would exceed $130 billion - more than the GDP of most countries.
That’s not a humanitarian problem. That’s a macroeconomic collapse in slow motion.