George Gittoes in Ukraine: From the bombed Central House of Culture to booby traps at family parks

His most recent dispatch from the front line includes details of detecting potentially killer tripwires, boobytraps and landmines in popular recreation spaces.

Gittoes travelled to Eastern Europe with his wife Hellen Rose last month, to document the impact of war on everyday citizens.

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He now believes sending Australian mine clearance experts to Ukraine would be a much-needed humanitarian act.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said between 2500 to 3000 Ukrainian troops have died so far in the war and another 10,000 have been injured.

Civilian casualties are more difficult to determine.

Gittoes spent hours with police, farmers and volunteers in Lukyanivka, a historical neighbourhood in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, finding landmines and booby traps.

But in revealing how they combed a public space by a river for concealed dangers, Gittoes explained how the behaviour of Russian soldiers has changed.

"When the Russians first arrived in the village they were starving and thirsty. They came to the farmhouses asking for eggs and water.

"Then they came back and took underwear and clothes - they were filthy dirty and their clothes were vile," he said.

"Then they came back and took everything of value, including things like Nike shoes. For fun they would roll their tanks over the farmer's cars, crushing them. In the process they got to know the farmers and their families well, but not in a friendly way."

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But what's next is even more sinister, he says.

"At the back of the farms, there is a recreation-picnic area where children play and families have barbecues near a river.

"They set this up with dozens of booby traps. The tripwires were about 4ft off the ground so animals could go under them but most children would set them off. Usually attached to grenades but sometimes to repurposed RPGs (rocket-propelled grenade).

The track down to there was planted with anti-personnel mines and the playing fields were covered in the same.

The tripwires were between trees in the forest."

The fine, rusted nature of the tripwires is almost invisible against the dry grasses in the background.

"I would have certainly been fooled by it if it had not been for the sharp eyes of the local cops and farmers," Gittoes said.

"When the Russians were leaving they took some village women down a road and made them scream. The men of the village came to help them in a van but it was a trap and they went over an anti-tank mine, killing one and seriously wounding the other three."

The South Coast couple also spent time at the previously magnificent but now bombed Central House of Culture in Irpin, near Kyiv.

The 1950s building is one of dozens of cultural sites damaged in the invasion. UNESCO has the tally at 90 so far.

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"The House of Art has been a made a target with every kind of ordinance in the Russian arsenal fired at it. The roof is gone and the inside charred.

"There are two white Soviet era statues between the front columns - a man on the right who could be a singer, a pet a painter but definitely an artist and on the left a mother looking us, as if into a bright future and holding an infant on her shoulder who has an outstretched arm in a gesture towards the sky. The child's little fingers have been shot off and the man on the other side has a bullet hole over his heart.

"Men like Trump and Putin surround themselves with gilded ornate furniture and expensive gaudiness. As true barbarians they hate what they do not understand, and art is at the top of their hate list.

"They like whatever is gold and glitters as affirmation of their wealth and power. Putin would like to oversee the destruction of European and Russian culture.

"I found a tin bucket, turned it upside down for a seat and drew the House of Art. I will develop it into a painting - a metaphor for this war on culture.

"As returning residents of Irpin passed, on the way back, to search through the rubble of their homes - they went out of their way to come and look over my shoulder, all saying how glad they were that art is happening again in this place of culture.

"As we drove out, we saw several of them beginning to make repairs to their bombed homes and we waved to them.

"Every day I become more impressed with the cultural, architectural and engineering achievements of this country knowing that the soldiers at the frontline fighting the Russians are often talented and well-educated professionals that the world needs, not for war but for the benefit of humanity.

"... we were at Irpin when we drove up to a mountainous rusted pile of cars. All the cars from the Bridge of Death had been scooped up and brought together.

"When I walked over to film them a local farmer needed to show me where not to tread. There were unexploded mortars embedded in the bitumen dotted around in random patterns.

"He was a farmer and pointed to the pile of cars where families had died, I had filmed the children's toys and dried blood inside them, and said: "We will met them down and make farm tools with them."

"I am sure they will, this is a community who knows how to make things as well as provide food and cooking oil for the world.

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