Direct proof of use
Human Rights Watch identified the OZM-72 among antipersonnel mines used in Ukraine after Russia's February 2022 full-scale invasion. Its June 2022 briefing listed OZM-72 mines as a type used in 2014-2015 and reported frequent pre-2022 sightings, seizures, and recoveries in eastern Ukraine; the same briefing also cited a May 2022 Kyiv Oblast incident in which local police said two men were killed by an OZM-72 mine planted by Russian troops.
In its June 2023 update, Human Rights Watch wrote that Ukrainian deminers working in retaken areas of Kharkiv and Kherson regions identified OZM-72 bounding fragmentation mines among Russian-stockpiled antipersonnel mines they had found and neutralized. Ukrainska Pravda's English report, citing Kyiv Oblast Police, separately identified the May 19, 2022 Bucha district casualty incident as an OZM-72 mine in a field between Lypivka and Korolivka.
Sources: HRW 2022 Ukraine Landmine Briefing, HRW 2023 Ukraine Landmine Update, Ukrainska Pravda Kyiv Oblast OZM-72 Report
Timeline
By 2014-2015, OZM-72 mines were already part of the documented mine problem in eastern Ukraine, according to Human Rights Watch's later review of sightings, seizures, and recoveries. The 2022 full-scale invasion expanded the mine-contamination pattern, with HRW attributing Russian antipersonnel mine use to multiple regions and naming the OZM-72 in that set.
The most specific dated OZM-72 incident in the sources is May 19, 2022, when two men were reported killed by an OZM-72 mine in Bucha district of Kyiv Oblast. HRW's 2023 update then connected OZM-72 clearance to deminers working in areas retaken from Russian forces in Kharkiv and Kherson regions during the months after Russia's 2022 withdrawals.
Sources: HRW 2022 Ukraine Landmine Briefing, HRW 2023 Ukraine Landmine Update, Ukrainska Pravda Kyiv Oblast OZM-72 Report
Narrative
The OZM-72 appeared in the war as an antipersonnel area-denial mine rather than as a mobile weapon system. HRW described it as a multipurpose bounding munition that can be command-detonated or victim-activated, and grouped it with other Soviet and Russian-origin antipersonnel mines documented in Ukraine.
The recorded use pattern is tied mainly to emplaced mine hazards left in fields, marshes, villages, and former Russian-held areas. The New Yorker, reporting with HALO Trust deminers near Kharkiv, described an OZM-72 tripwire site near an abandoned Russian trench and noted that a HALO deminer had been killed by an OZM in southern Ukraine in summer 2023.
The sources distinguish OZM-72 use from broader mine possession. HRW noted that Ukraine had possessed OZM-72 stocks in the past but said the 2022 evidence it summarized tied Russian forces to known use and to specific casualty and clearance contexts.
Sources: HRW 2022 Ukraine Landmine Briefing, HRW 2023 Ukraine Landmine Update, New Yorker HALO Mine Clearance Report
