In this struggling coal town in Eastern Ukraine, any job for a young woman is a find, but Yulia Lednova especially prizes hers.

For the locally competitive sum of $100 a month, she removes the detonators from land mines - the first step in recycling the weapons into plastic pelicans and other toys for children.

Her work is part of a NATO-sponsored demilitarization pilot project that officials say could become the biggest arms-destruction project in the world. NATO representatives say Ukraine has valuable expertise in destroying arms which could be used to reduce dangerous stockpiles across East Europe.

"I start work each day with the next row of land mines," says Ms. Lednova, blushing shyly as she explains her job. "I can feel the menace and evil in them."

Putting the mines inside a protective box, she operates a mechanism that pulls out the detonator. "Each mine I pick up is one less mine that might kill or disable someone," she says. "It feels good to be doing something useful and positive."

Financed with an $800,000 grant from Germany, Greece, and Turkey, the mines-to-toys pilot project will assess Ukraine's will and technical ability to destroy its own huge arsenals of antiquated arms and munitions.

If NATO members decide to continue the funding through the Partnership for Peace Trust Fund, the project will go on to destroy 1.5 million small arms and 133,000 tons of ammunition in Ukraine and may be extended to even larger stockpiles in Russia. That kind of program would require a budget of tens of millions of dollars, analysts say.

Michel Duray, director of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, is optimistic about the project, despite recent tension between Ukraine and Western nations over alleged illegal arms sales.

"This is potentially the biggest armament-destruction program in the world," he says. "Our experience here has been very impressive, and this is the first time we have attempted such a project in a former-Soviet country. This project has demonstrated that Ukraine is able to fulfill its commitments, and it matches the high-quality relationship we usually have with Ukraine."

Last summer, Lednova and 39 other employees of the Donetsk State Chemical Plant - many of whom used to make missiles, artillery shells and grenades for the Soviet army - were told they had one year to dismantle 400,000 land mines and recycle the materials for civilian purposes. The technicians then devised a way to refine the plastic mine casings into plastic pelicans and sandbox tool sets, most of which have been donated to a local orphanage.

Lednova and her colleagues have been so enthusiastic about their task that the project is several months ahead of schedule. The plant is expected to have reached its target before the end of this month. "This is by far the best job I have ever had," says Lednova, "and I hope there will be more work like this for us."

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