The West continues providing the Ukrainian Armed Forces with weaponry that they use against Russian troops, but are these weapons effective enough to prevail on the battlefield?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently praised performance characteristics of the US and German air defenses - the Patriot and IRIS-T, respectively - that were earlier supplied to Kiev as part of the West’s military assistance to Ukraine.
Zelensky argued that these systems were proving "highly effective" and had "already yielded significant results" by allegedly downing 65 Russian missiles of various kinds and 178 Russian assault drones. Sputnik checks this out.
View From Other Angle
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) earlier this month released a video of the destruction of the IRIS-T system by the Lancet-3 kamikaze drone, something that was reported by a US military news outlet as well. The IRIS-T was obliterated amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which the MoD said had failed on all fronts.
The developments were preceded by the Russian hypersonic missile Kinzhal successfully destroying five launchers of Ukraine’s Patriot system in May.
A well-informed source was cited by Sputnik as saying that the Patriot “was suddenly hit from an air ambush” by the MiG-31 fighter jet carrying the Kinzhal missile, and that “the enemy’s combat crews could do nothing to protect the anti-aircraft system.”
To understand the real effectiveness of the above-mentioned air defenses, one should first of all bear in mind that the Russian Armed Forces carry out “combined” missile attacks on Ukraine’s military infrastructure, Moscow-based military historian and political commentator Yury Knutov said.
What are Combined Strikes?
Knutov explained that such attacks stipulate Russian forces first using simple and “cheap” missiles along with similar unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones. The goal is to exhaust the Ukrainian air defenses, including the Patriots and the IRIS-Ts in terms of the number of missile interceptors or anti-aircraft missiles.
“Namely, we [Russian military] first launch, for example, the Kh-55 missiles, which are subject to decommissioning and were planned for disposal. Instead, we launch these missiles to prod the enemy to use his own expensive [Patriot or IRIS-T] interceptors to destroy the Kh-55s,” he said.
The same goes for Russian UAVs, he added. According to the expert, first and foremost, “relatively cheap Russian drones” are launched so that the enemy can use the same expensive interceptors to destroy these vehicles.
All this is followed by the "next echelon of Russian missiles, including the Kalibr, the X-555, and the X-101, which are already working directly on the Ukrainian targets themselves," Knutov noted. He underscored that neither the US- nor the German-made air defense systems are capable of tackling Russia’s Iskander short-range ballistic missiles.
Devil in Details
When asked about the effectiveness of the Patriots and the IRIS-Ts as such, the Russian expert noted that “if we take the total number of targets downed by these air defenses, it can turn out to be quite massive, so we can understandably refer to the high efficiency of these systems.”
Still, nothing is as simple as it could seem at first glance, according to Knutov.
"If we subtract from this number of the Russian UAVs and missiles the number of the pieces actually designated to destroy the Ukrainian target, and subtract the number of the drones and missiles that are designed to hoodwink the enemy, then the effectiveness of these NATO air defenses turns out to be extremely low," he emphasized.
How Can Russia Tackle the Touted Air Defenses?
Knutov explained that Russia сan grapple with the Patriots and the IRIS-Ts by means of the Kh-37 anti-radar missiles, which are capable of destroying the Ukrainian air defenses’ guidance or radar stations and thereby disable their key element.
This enables the Russian military to disable the Patriot or the IRIS-Ts systems for a long time, until they are repaired or the new ones are deployed, according to the expert.
He added that one cannot but mention Iskander-M missiles, capable of overcoming any enemy air defense shield, and the Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles, which successfully tackles the Patriot.
“Both Iskander-Ms and Kinzhals are highly effective against any Western air defense system. These missiles can destroy enemy air defenses even before and during deployment, a mission that can also be implemented with the help of the Kalibrs or Geran (Geranium) drones," Knutov concluded.
The Russian MoD has, meanwhile, said in a statement that since the beginning of its counteroffensive on June 4, Ukraine has lost more than 43,000 soldiers and over 4,900 units of various weaponry, including 26 aircraft, nine helicopters, 1,831 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, including 25 German-made Leopard tanks, seven French-made AMX wheeled tanks and 21 US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.
In addition, the Russian troops have destroyed Kiev’s 747 field artillery guns and mortars, including 76 American M777 artillery systems, as well as 84 self-propelled artillery mounts from Poland, the US, France and Germany.
The Russian Defense Ministry earlier said that since the beginning of Kiev’s counteroffensive in early June, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have already lost more than 43,000 servicemen.
Ukrainian soldiers learned the truth about Kiev’s counteroffensive from the social network TikTok, Yaroslav Mironyuk, a captured serviceman, told Sputnik.
“The commanders didn't say a peep. Some said it had already begun, others said it hadn’t started yet,” Mironyuk noted.
He said that he was also in the dark about the goals of the advance, adding that he learned about what was going on from "what's on TV" and from watching TikTok videos.
According to Mironyuk, his unit was supposed to be replaced in the Staromayorsk area on the Southern Donetsk front three days after they were deployed there, but the rotation had never happened.
What’s more, he went on to say, they ran out of food on the very first day, which was followed by a shortage of water. When he and his comrades-in-arms heard the Russian Armed Forces shelling their positions, they decided to lay down their weapons and surrender, as per Mironyuk.
The remarks came a few days after Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that since the start of Kiev’s counteroffensive, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had lost more than 43,000 soldiers and over 4,900 pieces of various weaponry, including 26 aircraft, nine helicopters, and 747 field artillery guns and mortars.
This followed Western media reports citing unnamed Ukrainian and Western officials as saying that Kiev's forces had lost approximately one-fifth of their Western military equipment over the last two months, including enormous numbers of armored vehicles, as well as using up much of the stockpiles of munitions it was given.
Earlier, both Ukrainian and Western officials admitted that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched by Ukraine's military on June 4, is going “slower than desired,” and is “behind schedule.”
Ukraine's Counteroffensive May 'Run Its Course in Next Few Weeks'
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched on June 4, has been unsuccessful on all fronts as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.
The next few weeks will see the Ukrainian counteroffensive “run its course”, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist and Bank of America strategist David Woo has told Russian media.
David Woo said that he was “really impressed” with the fact that "Russian military technology has literally been going through a revolution every three months" and "the Russians are constantly learning from their mistakes."
“The Russians are now fighting with weapons they didn’t have 18 months ago because they didn’t exist 18 months ago. And that to me is the most impressive thing, […] whereas the West is still walking around in the same circle, Russia’s getting better and better, and this war is gonna [sic] be won by technology in the end,” the former IMF economist argued.
He suggested that even though “the Ukrainians are good fighters," Russia will eventually “crush them”. According to Woo, “if Russia crushes Ukraine, that will be the end of American hegemony, as we know.”
Ukraine's much-hyped counteroffensive kicked off on June 4 after months of delays over a lack of military supplies from Western donors. Russian President Vladimir Putin underscored last month that Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which he said claimed the lives of “tens of thousands” of Ukrainian servicemen, had yielded no results.
"Neither the colossal resources that were pumped into the Kiev regime, nor the supply of Western weapons, tanks, artillery, armored vehicles and missiles helped. The delivery of thousands of foreign mercenaries and advisers who were most actively used in attempts to break through the front of our army did not help either,” Putin told a Russian Security Council meeting at the time.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for his part, said that "the Kiev regime has no successes” and “is in a very difficult situation.”
“The special military operation continues. It is obvious that the counteroffensive is not working out the way it was intended in Kiev," Peskov told reporters.
He was echoed by the Russian Defense Ministry, which, in turn, said that Ukrainian troops kept trying, but were failing to advance as they continue to suffer heavy losses in men and materiel. A number of Western media outlets also pointed to the unimpressive results of Kiev's counteroffensive, admitting that its progress was "slower than desired."
The Ukrainian ambassador to Saudi Arabia has thanked the Kingdom for hosting talks aimed at finding a peaceful resolution to Russia’s war in his country.
In a statement given to Arab News, Petrenko Anatolii said the talks in Jeddah, which started on Saturday, had been “constructive.”
“First of all, I’d like to thank Saudi Arabia for being so committed and hospitable to Ukraine in moving forward our peace formula plan,” he said.
“With Saudi support, we succeeded in bringing together national security advisers from 42 countries.”
Ukraine proposed its widely expected 10-point peace formula at the discussions, which a source from the Ukrainian delegation told Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath were “supported by several countries.”
President Volodomyr Zelensky said he wanted a global summit to take place based on the formula later this year.
“The last two days have proven to be constructive. A broad vision is in place and we collectively make gradual progress in preparation of the (upcoming) global summit, which is considered to be the focal point to start implementing the peace formula,” Anatolii said.
He added that the key objectives following the two-day talks remained to “stop military aggression against Ukraine, to restore territorial integrity and sovereignty, to kick-start the economic recovery of Ukraine and, of course, to bring confidence into the UN charter and international law.”
Zelensky’s head of staff Andriy Yermak said in a statement: “We had very productive consultations on the key principles on which a just and lasting peace should be built.”
Yermak said different viewpoints emerged during the talks in Saudi Arabia, calling them “an extremely honest, open conversation.”
He said all the countries present had demonstrated a commitment to the principles of international law and respect for the sovereignty and inviolability of the territorial integrity of states.
Russia did not attend the discussions but the Kremlin said it would “closely monitor” the proceedings.
A US official on Sunday expressed Washington’s appreciation to Riyadh for hosting the talks, describing them as “constructive,” according to an Al-Arabiya report.
“It was a good and constructive set of conversations with a range of countries who came together to exchange views and build common ground in support of a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, discuss how to end the war in Ukraine and address the practical consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine and around the world,” the person said.
“We were glad that more than 40 countries attended the talks and benefited from the chance to hear directly from Ukraine about the war and to exchange views.”
Kiev, West downplaying other initiatives by promoting 'Zelensky’s formula' — Russian MFA
By promoting Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s "peace formula," Kiev and the West are trying to play down the initiatives of other countries, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
"By promoting Zelensky’s ‘formula,’ the Kiev regime and the West are trying to downplay the great importance of initiatives put forward by other countries and monopolize the right to present them," she noted, commenting on the Jeddah meeting on Ukraine.
According to the diplomat, "Zelensky’s formula" is a meaningless ultimatum to Russia. "None of its ten points is designed to find a solution to the crisis through talks and diplomatic efforts, while all of them together make up a meaningless ultimatum to Russia, aimed at prolonging military activities. It is impossible to resolve the issue on such a basis," Zakharova added.
However, she pointed out that Russia appreciated the mediation and humanitarian initiatives coming from "our friends in the Global South." "Unlike the Kiev regime, which broke off and banned talks with Russia, we have been and remain open to resolving the crisis diplomatically, and we are ready to respond to truly serious proposals," the diplomat went on to say.
Zakharova emphasized that the Russian Foreign Ministry had taken note of the consultations on the Ukrainian crisis "that were held in the Saudi city of Jeddah on August 5-6, initiated by the Kiev regime and the Group of Seven nations
According to her, Russia expects that its like-minded countries from the BRICS group (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) and other partners will share their evaluations of the meeting. Zakharova also stressed that without inviting Russia and "taking its interests into account, no meeting on Ukraine will have any added value at all." She noted that it was only possible to find a comprehensive, sustainable and fair solution to the conflict if "the Kiev regime puts an end to military activities and terrorist attacks, while its Western sponsors stop pumping the Ukrainian armed forces with weapons."
"The original foundations of Ukraine’s sovereignty should be reaffirmed, that is, its neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-weapon-free status," the Russian diplomat said. "The new territorial reality, which came to be as a result of residents of new Russian regions exercising their right to self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter, should be recognized," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman maintained. "There is a need to ensure the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, and the rights of its Russian-speaking citizens and ethnic minorities in accordance with the country’s domestic legislation and international laws," she added. "We are confident that the implementation of these elements is fully in line with the idea of international peace and security, which is what Russia is fighting for," Zakharova concluded.
The Shabara artisanal mine, where cobalt and copper are dug out by hand, near the Congolese boomtown of Kolwezi
Correspondent Katharine Houreld and photographer Arlette Bashizi traveled together across southeastern Congo, visiting industrial and artisanal mines in the country’s three largest cobalt mining towns. Houreld is The Washington Post’s East Africa bureau chief, based in Nairobi, with responsibilities stretching from the Horn of Africa to the continent’s southern tip. Bashizi is a Congolese photographer, based in Goma, focusing on issues related to health, environment and culture.
Alain Kasongo, burly and goateed, worked for four years driving the heavy trucks that hauled away tons of cobalt ore from a gaping hole at one of the biggest mines in Congo. The vibrations from the equipment and the jolts of driving over rough ground during his 12-hour shifts could be bone-rattling, he said. Finally, the pain in his spine grew so unbearable that he needed surgery.
His older brother, Patchou Kasongo Mutuka, worked the same job at the same mine. He suffered the same injury and required the same surgery — as did 13 other drivers of excavators and trucks at the mine who were interviewed. They lifted their shirts to reveal surgical scars and spread out carefully folded medical records confirming their accounts. They in turn named seven more colleagues who had suffered the same fate, all within a two-year period.
“It hurt so badly when I went home, I would lie awake at night,” said Alain Kasongo, 43, displaying bumps and ridges on his body from what he said were three operations.
The pressure to produce cobalt is tremendous. It is an essential ingredient in the batteries of most electric vehicles and many consumer electronics. And the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Congo for short, is the king of cobalt. Last year, it accounted for about three-quarters of global production, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. This cobalt can come at a high human price.
Seven years ago, revelations about dire working conditions in Congo’s informal mining sector vaulted into the world’s headlines after Amnesty International and the Congolese rights group Afrewatch published a report detailing deaths and injuries among the countless children working in small-scale, hand-dug mines, often in manually carved tunnels that frequently collapsed and buried the young miners alive.
Since then, global appetite for Congo’s cobalt has grown sharply, mostly driven by a dramatic increase in the demand for EVs. Nearly 90 percent of the cobalt produced in Congo, home to half the world’s reserves, goes into batteries, including those used by American, French, German, Japanese and South Korean automakers. Demand for cobalt is projected to increase 20-fold by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.
Miners carry bags of ore at Shabara.
EVs are widely considered crucial to addressing climate change. Their adoption is spreading at a breakneck pace, fueling soaring demand for minerals including cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese that go into building EV batteries and the overall vehicles. But the extraction and processing of these metals, in far-flung parts of the world, often take a significant and largely unrecognized toll on workers, local communities and the environment.
Without a full accounting, there is a risk that the green-energy transition could repeat the painful history of earlier industrial revolutions.
The Amnesty report about cobalt mining in Congo and the widespread press coverage that followed prompted the industries that produce and use cobalt to set voluntary standards for the responsible sourcing of the mineral. Many automakers now say they use suppliers that are audited for adherence to these standards and that use cobalt only from mechanized industrial mines, where child labor is forbidden.
Clean cars, hidden toll
A series unearthing the unintended consequences of securing the metals needed to build and power electric vehicles
Boon for the Taliban
These industrial mines accounted for about 89 percent of Congo’s cobalt production in 2020, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey, although industry insiders said some smaller industrial mines buy hand-dug ore and include it in their tallies. The very biggest mines, operated by companies such as Swiss-owned Glencore and China Molybdenum (CMOC), say they do not buy any ore from hand-dug mines, which are known as artisanal mines. Former employees, artisanal mine bosses and residents who live near the mines said in interviews they believe that’s true, noting that it would be hard to conceal truck convoys transferring ore from hand-dug mines.
But unsafe, artisanal mining persists, as does child labor. In locations visited by Washington Post journalists, workers in flip-flops and torn T-shirts, including some who appeared to be teenagers, crowded into huge open pits or descended into the tunnels that honeycomb the ground. Their ore is usually bought by middlemen and smaller industrial mines, refined locally and then shipped to China, where it disappears in the opaque global supply chain.
A heavy equipment operator directs a truck driver at a mine in Congo’s Lualaba province
Yet even industrial mining can be hazardous. In interviews, 36 current and former employees at nine of Congo’s industrial cobalt mines described the dangerous work done every day. Some said their employers treated injured workers well and offered alternative jobs, but many told of workers who suffered life-changing injuries on the job and then were either fired or saw their medical bills rejected, in what they contend was a violation of Congolese law.
Patrick Kazadi Mumba, a neurologist in the mining town of Lubumbashi, has treated hundreds of miners. He said he knew of at least 150 heavy-machine operators — the drivers of large trucks and excavators — who needed spinal operations in the past decade, almost all for herniated disks. They accounted for half his patients.
“I was seeing very young people with spinal problems,” he said, calling the rate of injury “very unusual.” Most of the injured operators who were interviewed for this article were in their 30s and 40s when they underwent surgery.
Mumba said the number of those injured is likely to be far greater than those he has seen, since many mine workers seek treatment only when their disks or vertebrae are so damaged that they need operations. Some miners conceal their injuries until they become unbearable so they can continue working. The cases aren’t limited to the Tenke Fungurume mine, where Alain Kasongo and his brother worked — owned by CMOC, the world’s second-biggest cobalt producer — but are common across Congo’s industrial mines, he said.
Heavy-machine operators say they are exposed to constant, strong vibrations for long periods, both day and night, as they work 12-hour shifts with only one break, six days in a row. Some countries recognize such vibrations as a medical risk that must be managed. The operators are also subjected to frequent jolting, they say, as they drive their heavy vehicles along uneven dirt tracks.
Julie Liang, CMOC’s vice president for environmental, social and corporate governance, said the company has adopted several measures to protect the health of heavy-machine operators. The condition of their seats is checked to see if they vibrate, and if they do, the operators are to stop their work immediately so that maintenance teams can examine the seats and replace them if necessary, she said. The company also checks to make sure that roads in the pit are smooth so that the trucks do not jolt or vibrate, and trucks are to be loaded initially with soft material so that heavier boulders don’t make the truck jolt, she said.
A doctor reviews the X-rays of a miner patient with back pain.
During the past seven years, the company’s occupational health department has reported that 28 heavy-machine operators have undergone back surgery, according to Liang. The mine currently employs 534 operators.
“Ensuring responsible mining practices, including the health and safety of mineworkers, is essential for the industry future,” said Susannah McLaren, head of responsible sourcing and sustainability at the Cobalt Institute, an industry body. She said companies are encouraged to follow principles and guidelines set by the United Nations, the International Labor Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But Gregory Mthembu-Salter, an expert on Congolese mining who founded South Africa-based Phuzumoya Consulting, which researches African political economies and natural resources, said international concern about mining conditions, so focused on child labor, has overlooked threats to the safety and rights of workers in the industrial mines.
“How can you base a green revolution on trashing Congolese environment and exploiting Congolese workers?” he asked.
Life-changing injuries
Congo — chaotic, corrupt and mired in poverty despite glittering riches below ground — straddles Africa’s cobalt and copper belt. Highways in the southeast of the country are choked with trucks hauling sacks of midnight-blue cobalt hydroxide powder and stacked plates of burnished copper, two key metals for the global transition to cleaner energy.
Most major EV manufacturers use cobalt that is at least in part sourced from the Tenke Fungurume mine, according to mapping by Brussels-based Resource Matters, which studies the management and impact of mining.
In the town of Fungurume, men in reflective nylon jackets shout greetings across the dusty streets during shift changes. Pickup trucks sporting the mine’s orange flags weave through traffic. Small shops showcase gleaming spades and pickaxes.
Alain Kasongo needed back surgery after working for mining company Tenke Fungurume. He lost his job after the surgery
The mine is the town’s lifeblood. But fortunes can quickly change.
All 15 of the injured heavy-machine operators who were interviewed said the mine paid for their medical care and spinal operations and kept them on full salaries while they recuperated, as required by Congolese law. They all received doctor’s notes, reviewed by The Post, saying they could return to work in duties that did not entail heavy lifting or exposure to intense vibration.
Instead, they said, the mine let nearly all of them go.
Without work, most lost their homes. Some saw their families break up. Others had to pull their children out of school.
Alain Kasongo’s employer, CMOC, had promised him different duties, he said — a relief because he had a wife and 12 children to support. But after he had finished recuperating from surgery, he said, he was abruptly told he had no more job. He said he was given $9,000, about six months’ pay, as severance.
Kasongo said that when he could no longer pay school fees, the headmaster reprimanded his children in front of an assembly and expelled them. The youngest children ran home in tears. To help pay for the oldest two to finish school and graduate, his wife began skipping meals and medication.
“It’s so painful. I wish I could die,” he said, ducking his face inside his neckline to wipe away an angry tear. “I don’t sleep. I’m the father. I should provide.”
Mwambe bin Nkongolo said he returned to the mine after his surgery, but CMOC would not give him a different job, despite a medical note. He said he resumed his old duties and worked for three months until severe pain and the fear of crippling himself led him to quit. He left behind a scathing letter of complaint.
Liang said CMOC’s policy is to give new, suitable jobs to employees who have been injured until they’re able to return to their original work. If a worker is permanently unable to resume their original job, the company tries to “reallocate the employee in line with his or her current abilities,” she said. When that fails, after six months of sick leave, the employee can be legally fired on “grounds of unfitness,” Liang added.
Some have tried to find alternative work in other mines, but they said their scars meant they couldn’t pass medical exams to get hired.
“Who will employ me like this?” asked Christian Mutamba Njenge, who recounted receiving injected painkillers for two years before undergoing spinal surgery and losing his job. Since then, his wife has left him, taking their children.
Lacking money for school fees, some of Kasongo’s children were expelled, and his wife skipped meals and medication.
Claims of paltry compensation
Similar stories about poor treatment were repeated in interviews with current and former workers who had been injured at industrial mines scattered across southeastern Congo. But the nature of the injuries varied widely. Many of these employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
One worker, whose fingertip was severed by a machine, said his supervisor dumped him at the entrance of the mine while he was still bleeding, leaving him to find a taxi to get to the hospital by himself.
Another worker said his wages were slashed by two-thirds as he recovered after a badly soldered pipe sprayed him in the face with acid.
Yet another recounted that his family had to save up money to have metal pins removed from his leg after a workplace injury because the company wouldn’t cover the cost.
In one of the mining towns, in a cluster of crumbling houses on an alley choked with flattened plastic bottles and chicks scrambling underfoot, lives a worker who tried to fight for his rights.
Now 30, the man was injured a couple of years ago while working for a subcontractor at one of the country’s largest mines. He had been trying to repair a machine, he said, when his supervisor pressed the wrong button and accidentally unloaded a pipeful of cement into his face.
The worker said he suffered permanent damage to his eyes that required surgery and three months of recuperation. When he went to collect his paycheck, he was fired and told that even the salary for the last month he had worked — $150 — was being withheld to help cover the costs incurred by the company for his medical treatment.
The worker recounted filing a court case, seeking $9,000 in damages. The clerk asked him for $50 to make a company representative appear in court. He paid but nothing happened. Then he went to the government labor office, which asked him for $350 to open a case. He didn’t have it, so he borrowed it. But when his wife developed breast cancer, the money went for her operation instead, he said.
Broke, he couldn’t even afford to buy formula for his 8-month-old daughter, he said. The baby came down with a fever and died.
“Her name was Mirene,” his wife said softly.
Josué Kashal, a human rights lawyer who runs the Centre d’Aide Juridico-Judiciaire, began bringing workers’ cases against the industrial mining companies in 2019. His office is in the boomtown of Kolwezi, where concrete walls topped with razor wire bisect the huge tawny steppes of mining waste towering over the city. Kashal has a filing cabinet full of cases. Progress is slow. Many of his clients just give up.
One of his clients is Jean Ngoy Kazadi, a former security guard at the Pumpi mine, which belongs to Chinese-majority-owned Lamikal. Kazadi was shot during a robbery at the mine early last year. One of his legs had to be amputated.
Miners carry bags of ore at Shabara. Artisanal mines strike direct deals with firms whose trucks rumble into the pits and carry off sacks of ore, or with local refineries that process it for export. Miners at work with sledgehammers at Shabara. Despite the perils of artisanal mining, eliminating the sector would be a disaster because it supports about 200,000 miners and their families, an official for Lualaba province said.
Thierry Alamba, who runs Balto, said, “Our lawyer wants to negotiate with [the hospital]. It is very expensive for us.” He referred further questions to Balto’s lawyer, who did not respond. Lamikal did not respond to requests for comment.
Kazadi, 43, a father of six children, is desperate. “I’ve got no salary, no food; my kids don’t go to school,” he said dolefully as he shuffled along the tiled floor toward his room. He spends his afternoons sitting just inside the hospital’s freshly painted white fence, staring at the sun-drenched, bougainvillea-lined street just out of reach.
Subcontracted workers at risk
Kazadi’s predicament is common, according to doctors interviewed in three of Congo’s largest mining towns, especially among workers employed by subcontractors for the mining companies.
The large companies usually pay a stipend to help cover health care for workers and their families, the doctors said, though the amount and quality of health care varies from mine to mine. But a 2021 report by Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), a London-based corporate watchdog group focused on Africa, said that about 57 percent of workers in the five largest mines in Congo are employed by subcontractors. Compared with those directly employed by the mining companies, these workers are usually paid less and don’t receive the same benefits, the group said.
“Subcontracted workers often lack the basic minimum requirements for health and safety, and they earn extremely low wages,” said Anaïs Tobalagba, a legal and policy researcher for RAID. “Many lack basic protective equipment and, when injured, are fired because their employers simply don’t want to pay for medical care or are only willing to pay an insignificant amount.”
To avoid bringing employees directly onto their payroll, as required by law, mining companies often switch among subcontractors when those firms’ short-term contracts expire.
The employees of some subcontractors said in interviews that they were often expected to work for months without a day off and that their pay would be docked if they took one. One man said he had worked 14 straight months at the Tenke Fungurume mine without a weekend off.
In this case, Liang said, the subcontractor’s policy was to give its workers four days of paid leave each month.
Asked about the general treatment and hours of subcontractors’ employees at Tenke Fungurume, Liang said, “The subcontractors have and implement their own policies and we ensure, through due diligence and onsite monitoring, that they comply with the law and do not contradict CMOC policies.” She added: “All employees and contractors are made aware of the complaints hotline and encouraged to report violations. The company has appropriate procedures in place for investigating and dealing with reported violations.”
Under Congolese law, employers are required to pay for the treatment of workers injured on the job, and employees are entitled to two consecutive days off after seven days of work.
Perilous artisanal mining persists
In the years after Amnesty’s revelations, the very largest mining companies moved to insulate their ore from that dug by hand in the small-scale mines. These big companies operate their own on-site cobalt refineries to prevent any mixing.
But some smaller companies do buy directly from the artisanal mines. Or, at local refineries, these companies mix their machine-excavated ore with hand-dug ore from artisanal mines. This cobalt eventually finds its way into the international supply chain.
At some of the hand-dug mines, workers load the ore onto the back of motorbikes or into vans that haul it to depots run by middlemen, locally known as “negotiateurs.” The largest of these depots is at Musompo, where the nicknames of negotiateurs, such as “Boss Djo” and “Madame Wu,” are scrawled across battered sheet-metal signs in front of the stalls.
Other artisanal mines, such as Shabara, strike direct deals with companies whose trucks rumble into the pits and carry off sacks of ore, or with local refineries that process it for export.
Despite the furor over child labor and treacherous working conditions, eliminating the artisanal mining sector would be a disaster because it supports about 200,000 miners and their families, said Jacques Kaumba Mukumbi, the mining minister for Lualaba province.
In recent years, the Congolese government, foreign companies and the industry-funded Fair Cobalt Alliance have sought to work with the cooperatives that run some artisanal mines to improve their conditions. But the money required to enhance safety is scarce.
SAEMAPE, the government-backed union charged with monitoring safety in the hand-dug mines and ensuring that tunnels don’t exceed 30 meters (just under 100 feet) in length, is so poorly funded that staffers often have to pay motorbike taxis out of their own pockets to travel among the sites, according to a SAEMAPE representative who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
RCS Global, an auditing firm partly funded by Western multinational companies, monitors six artisanal mining sites, and its recommendations have helped improve safety and reduce child labor, according to data provided by the group. But these mines still recorded 65 deaths between the start of 2019 and this May, the data shows. The most durable safety measures, such as using machinery to clear away earth that can collapse into tunnels, are expensive, said Nicholas Garrett, director of RCS Global. So accidents remain common.
130M metric tons - Top cobalt- producing countries - Countries with the largest known reserves 10K - The largest known cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo
In June, such a tunnel collapse at the Midingi mine trapped 35-year-old Fiston Ngoy wa Nyembwe. When the earth began to shift, his fellow miners scrambled to the surface, but he was the deepest in the tunnel and couldn’t escape.
For 18 days, he had no light or food, and no one heard his screams. “I thought I would die,” he said from a hospital bed. “I prayed a lot. I thought about my family.”
Ultimately, workers digging for ore nearby broke through the wall of his tunnel and were shocked to discover him alive, lying on the ground, too weak to move. He had survived on moisture dripping through the tunnel walls, a fellow worker said.
He was dragged to the surface — his eyes bandaged against the unfamiliar light — to cheers that echoed around the pits.
