AI-powered drone company to assist in demining Ukrainian farmlands

AI company Safe Pro Group has signed a multi-year agreement with Ukrainian agricultural company Nibulon to deploy AI-powered drones for detecting landmines in farmland, BusinessWire reported on Jan. 31.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy estimates that over 139,300 square kilometers of land are potentially contaminated with explosives from the ongoing war, with clearance efforts expected to take over a decade and cost $35 billion.

The partnership will use Safe Pro’s SpotlightAI platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services, to survey affected farmland more efficiently.

War-related farmland abandonment has already led to $2 billion in lost crops.

Safe Pro’s AI has processed over 931,000 drone images, identifying more than 18,000 explosive remnants across 10,500 acres, significantly speeding up mine detection.

Nibulon, headquartered in Mykolaiv, stands as the sole company in the country’s agriculture sector equipped with a proprietary fleet and shipyard.

Specializing in the export of grains like wheat, barley, and corn, Nibulon is a prominent player in the industry.

Ukraine remains the world’s most mined country.

China is Russia’s sole supplier of key military-use rare metals amid sanctions, RFE/RL reports

As Russia’s options to purchase gallium and germanium from around the world almost disappeared, China became the sole supplier in 2023, the investigation said, citing leaked data from Russian customs databases.

The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Hodunova