Prince Harry Continues Diana’s Demining Legacy in Ukraine 30 Years Later

Prince Harry joined technicians from The HALO Trust  Ukraine in the village of Myrotske on April 24, where teams have spent four months clearing a dense, high-risk forest. During the initial weeks of the 2022 invasion, Russian forces occupied the settlement, establishing fortified positions and a massive ammunition depot estimated at 20 truckloads of munitions.

When the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck the site to repel the advance, the resulting explosions scattered tons of live ordnance across the forest floor. Today, these “silent killers” still threaten the lives of civilians trying to reclaim their community.

By joining the effort, Prince Harry continues the legacy of his mother, Princess Diana, who supported The HALO Trust demining organization. In 1997, Diana’s walk through a minefield in Angola brought global attention to the deadly threat of landmines. Prince Harry has supported The HALO Trust since 2011, visiting demining sites in Angola and Mozambique before his current mission in Ukraine.

“In many conflicts, the unexploded ordinance, the minefields, is something that is cleared and made aware of later on,” Prince Harry said. “But with the ongoing war here, people still want to be able to carry on their lives as much as humanly possible.”

Today, thanks to the years of tireless work of demining crews, much of the territory around Bucha  is safe once again. In 2022, the government estimated that 174,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian land, an area twice the size of Austria, were potentially contaminated by mines. Operating in Ukraine since 2015 in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv regions, HALO teams have successfully cleared and verified over 29,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of Belgium), allowing families to return home and fields to be safe again.

In Myrotske, Harry took a closer look at the 21st-century clearance methods, witnessing firsthand how the technology is evolving to save lives. The Prince didn’t shy away from taking the controls himself by operating an FPV drone and controlling a Spot robot by Boston Dynamics. These tools allow teams to scout and clear hazardous terrain without putting human lives at high risk.

“While HALO does the work, and while UNITED24 continues to make people aware of what to look for, what to be aware of, and what to be careful of—that will inevitably save many lives,” Harry said.

The Prince later visited the Wall of Remembrance near St. Andrew’s Church in Bucha to honor the civilians killed during the occupation. The site marks a mass grave where 119 victims of the Russian forces were buried in March 2022, during Russia’s occupation of Bucha.

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