A RHINO demining vehicle, a video grab

South Korea may soon provide Ukraine with RHINO mine removing vehicles, local newspaper Chosun reported on Monday, citing government sources.

RHINO vehicles will help defuse mines in the rear or create a passage in a minefield at the frontline, the sources said.

Since the materiel is not lethal, it can be considered as humanitarian assistance—something Seoul is mindful of given Russia’s pressure not to provide military aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine will receive only two such vehicles so far, Chosun reports.

The RHINO is equipped with a mine-clearing plough and a digging boom on the hull of a K1A1 tank and is called a ‘perfect engineering weapon’ because it is used to secure manoeuvre routes by clearing mines and various obstacles.

The vehicle ploughs the ground with a plough in the front of the vehicle to find buried mines, and also has a magnetically sensitive landmine neutralisation device that emits a magnetic field to remove landmines, so it can detect landmines up to five metres away.

In May, the Wall Street Journal reported South Korea may have secretly transferred "hundreds of thousands" of artillery rounds for Ukraine under an agreement with the US.