Multiple Eastern European countries have left the international convention banning the use of landmines in recent weeks so that they can use the controversial weapon to deter Russian aggression.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Finland have announced their plans to withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of landmines, in recent weeks, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The countries in the Eastern European bloc, which borders Russia and Belarus, have sought to fortify their militaries in preparation for future Russian aggression and have continued to increase defense spending.
“While for some it may seem cruel, for me it is a necessity. Because we are going to have mines on our territory, but they will either be Russian mines, where we won’t know where they are and they will be in large quantities and may kill a lot of our citizens,” Dovilė Šakalienė, Lithuania’s minister of national defense, told Defense News. “Or it will be our own mines where we will know where they are placed, and they do have a very good deterrence effect on Russian soldiers.”
Poland is looking to produce upward of a million domestically, according to Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Bejda.
“We want these mines to be produced in Poland, we have such capacities. The issue at hand is to increase such capacities … and we treat equally the private defense industry and the state-owned one,” Bejda told local radio broadcaster RMF FM in an interview.
Human rights groups have sought to ban the use of landmines across the globe for several decades now because the unexploded ordnances pose threats to civilians long after a conflict ends. The mass exodus of countries from the treaty is a blow to their efforts.
HOUTHI ‘CAPITULATION’ AGAINST US DOESN’T END ISRAEL CONFLICT
Laurynas Kasciunas, Lithuania’s defense minister, told the New York Times that Ukrainian military personnel told them to “get out of all these conventions” because “Russia follows no laws or customs of war.”
Lithuania’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement that “counter-mobility measures are an important part of our national defense concept” and that it “would allow blocking and slowing down the actions of hostage states against Lithuania.”
Both Russia and Ukraine have used landmines along the front lines of the war, and the United States provided Ukraine with cluster munitions, which contain submunitions that explode in the air above a target, releasing up to hundreds of smaller bomblets across a more expansive area. The submunitions that fail to detonate essentially become landmines.
The cluster munitions Russia has used in Ukraine have a dud rate between 30%-40%, whereas the U.S. will be providing it with these munitions with a dud rate below 2.35%, according to U.S. defense officials.
