A former soldier from Norfolk who has travelled to fight in Ukraine has helped tackle some of the deadly explosives facing those living on the frontline.

Connor Darton, 30, from Norwich, has joined other British ex-servicemen who have travelled to the frontline to join the ranks of Ukrainian fighters.

He is now using his skills to clear the streets of explosives left by aerial bombardments of towns and villages and booby traps left by Russian troops.

He said: “Areas are littered with a lot of mines, a lot of tripwire devices and some real gnarly stuff.

“It’s near impossible to make a lot of these safe without the correct kit or equipment but we do what we can to avoid any civilians or children becoming further casualties to the Russians that put them here in the first place.”

The father-of-two, who grew up in Great Yarmouth and attended Flegg High School before joining the Royal Anglian Regiment serving in Afghanistan as a dog handler searching for explosives.

He was one of the youngest dog handlers scouting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) with his highly trained golden labrador for them to be safely defused.

Pictures shared by him on the bombed outs streets in Ukraine show a mix of large bomb casings and large shells together with smaller mines and tripwires devices that pose a deadly danger to both Ukrainian fighters and civilians.

“For anybody who knows what they are looking at, you'll notice that some of these are cluster munitions used against civilians in civilian populated areas,” he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russian soldiers fleeing parts of the country of wreaking havoc by leaving behind mines and tripwires in a deliberate attempt to cause destruction.

“There are a lot of trip wires, a lot of other dangers,” the Ukrainian leader said in a stark warning to the nation, adding that Russian troops appeared to be laying boobytraps to create a “complete disaster”.

The Red Cross has also said humanitarian corridors were being lined with land mines as fighting intensifies for the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

Spokesperson Ewan Watson said the aid group was “running out of adjectives to describe the horrors that residents in Mariupol have suffered”.