By and large, the war never ends for the sappers. Human prudence has a short lifespan. It's a fact that as soon as the trail of deadly discoveries from one formidable battle dissipates, new man-made conflagrations emerge. Once again, bombs, artillery shells, and mines are unleashed. Thousands upon thousands of deadly "thorns" remain buried in the ground.

By the way, if people had suddenly decided not to fight once and for all, the sappers would still have plenty of work to do for many decades to come. First of all, because humans have created so many deadly traps for their own kind. Secondly, removing mines and other explosive devices is a very meticulous and precise task that requires careful attention and precision.

Anyone who encounters such work lives and acts as if in a different dimension, where sensations and feelings change by orders of magnitude. In this special world, our smaller brothers are unrivaled aces and indispensable assistants. For your information, dogs have a 48-fold better sense of smell and a 16-fold better sense of hearing than humans. So why not involve our four-legged friends in the battle lines? Moreover, they themselves are willing to take on a special, dangerous service, which can be described as a sapper's job without exaggeration: a treat is provided for any discovery. However, they probably prefer to look their best in front of their owner, the dog handler.

A few minutes ago, before freezing in front of the camera lens, the "shaggy sapper" (on the cover of the magazine) became alert at the command of his leader, bent down to the ground, and rushed forward with sharp movements. After a few meters, he stopped in place. He carefully sniffed the ground, as if testing himself, and sat down with his tongue hanging out. As expected, he faced the dangerous discovery. However, this time it was a training exercise, which does not diminish the achievements of our heroes. In their spare time, as we have noticed, the four-legged soldiers from the mine-detection dog unit also enjoy posing for the photographer. It's as if they understand that there is something worth capturing on film. After all, their service is not ordinary, and their military unit is special.

The engineer-sapper brigade, which has a separate mine clearance company with a dog training platoon, despite its young age, already has both combat traditions and combat experience acquired in Abkhazia. By the way, the commander of the unit, Colonel A. Korkodola, was awarded the Order of Courage after a business trip to the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone. The same award was awarded to the commander of the engineering and sapper battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Yu. Yamanov, and other military personnel were also awarded. Among them, five people received the medal "For Bravery".

... On the day of the oath-taking ceremony, Senior Lieutenant K. Shitikov, the commander of the mine clearance group, promised to train the newcomers to become good specialists. Who knows how the young soldiers, including Private Vorozheikin (pictured taking the oath), felt about the officer's words of encouragement. Today, when the initial military training has long been completed, the soldiers of the separate mine clearance company have little doubt about it. This is because they have been continuously expanding their knowledge and improving their skills during their combat training. The photographs serve as evidence of this. One of them shows a training session on the fire method of detonation. Captain S. Aksutin is supervising the correct execution of the exercise of setting fire to an incendiary tube. By the way, it only burns for thirty seconds. So you need to be quick-witted. In the next photo, the sapper soldiers are performing this exercise in a challenging environment. The real explosion serves as a reminder that a sapper must not make mistakes.

In the mine clearance company, commanded by Major Yu. Dmitrik, everything is going according to a pre-arranged plan. At the next lesson, we already see the commander of the mine clearing platoon, Junior Sergeant E. Panyukov, removing an anti-tank mine. And after a while, when the day was already beginning to fade, soldiers-sappers holed targets on the firing line...

It is clear that the life of the unit, where Captain O. Prokofiev is the deputy commander for educational work, is not limited to combat training and operational missions. Oleg Georgievich has been serving in this company for only a few months, but in such a short time, he has managed to win over the personnel. The officer often has heart-to-heart conversations with the soldiers. He shares interesting moments from his own officer's life. In turn, the sapper soldiers share their memories of their previous civilian lives. In conversations, they often talk about the events of the summer of 1998, when, at the initiative of the brigade command, and especially Major A. Nechiporenko, a military sports camp for civilian youth was organized on the base of the unit, in cooperation with the administration of the Krasnogorsk district. Oleg Prokofiev, then a senior lieutenant, was in charge of the training camp, and we can see him in the photo at the firing range next to Slava Voskoboynikov. A total of 50 people went through the camp training in two groups, and who knows, maybe in two or three years, one of the guys who learned about the life and service of the sappers will take his place in the familiar army ranks.

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