Withdrawal from the Ottawa Treaty | Faced with the Russian threat, Europe is thinking of anti -personnel mines

(Warsaw, Poland) For 40 years, a line full of Russian anti -personnel mines separated the Soviet block from the West, preventing people from fleeing to the west.

At the end of the Cold War, the mines were removed over the entire length of what was called the iron curtain. Antimine activists have prompted world leaders to develop an international treaty prohibiting this weapon which without discernment of civilians.

Today, before the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow in 2022, five countries bordering Russia plan to reintroduce this weapon prohibited by most countries since 1999, to strengthen their defenses against a Russian attack.

Poland, the three Baltic countries, Finland and Ukraine announced this year their withdrawal from the treaty prohibiting mines, signed in Ottawa in 1997 and entered into force in 1999. This will not lead to the immediate installation of anti -personnel mines; The official withdrawal of the treaty takes six months.

Disputed withdrawals

However, this abandonment of one of the pillars of the Post-Cold War unworthy of the antimine activists.

“We are furious against these countries,” said Tamar Gabelnick, director of the international campaign for the ban on terrestrial mines, an organization which in 1997 won the Nobel Peace Prize for its demining work and its role in the development of the Ottawa Treaty.

“They know very well that it will not help them against Russia,” said Mr.^me Gabelnick. For her, this is a political calculation on the part of officials who want to land as defenders of national security.

High military officials of three of the five countries who have announced their withdrawal from the treaty said in the past that they saw little military interest in reintroducing anti -personnel mines. They mainly kill civilians and provide a limited defense against modern mechanized armies.

The war in Ukraine “has changed everything”, deplores Veronika Honkasalo, left -wing deputy in the Finnish parliament, opposed to the exit of the treaty, a decision supported by an overwhelming majority during a vote on June 19. Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, “people have been really afraid. We have a 1,300 -kilometer border with Russia and a long history of wars with it ”.

Among European countries with a land border with Russia, only Norway maintains its commitment to the Ottawa Treaty.

According to the United Nations, this treaty allowed the destruction of at least 55 million anti -personnel mines. Many mines were placed during the Cold War, in conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Burma and many other countries. They continued to kill and mutilate well after the end of the fighting.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, 80 % of the victims of anti-personnel mines are civilians, including many children; The number of killed or mutilated each year has gone from more than 20,000 in the past two decades to around 3,500.

“It’s a horrible weapon,” said Mr.^me Honkasalo.

Russia, the United States, China and around thirty other countries have not signed the Ottawa Convention, but more than 160 have done so.

According to Mary Wareham, activist against anti-personnel mines which participated in the negotiations of the treaty in the 1990s, the withdrawals announced are a setback after decades of effort to limit civilian victims: they “create a terrible previous”, for the stability of the international legal building governing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well as the conduct of the war itself.

“Once an idea is launched, it accelerates,” fears m^me Wareham, Deputy Director of the Crisis Division, Conflicts and Weapons at Human Rights Watch. “Where does it stop?” »»

Russian threat changes the situation

Among the neighbors of Russia, the idea of withdrawing from the treaty was born in 2024 during a visit to Ukraine by Laurynas Kasciunas, then Minister of Defense of Lithuania.

The ban on anti -personnel mines harmed the fight against the Russian invasion, said high -placed Ukrainian soldiers. He called for a revision of their use by the Baltic countries.

“I understand the fear of anti -personnel mines; They have caused immense suffering in many places, ”says Kasciunas. But it is wrong to think that they are not very useful on the military level, he says.

The mass use of anti -personnel mines by Russia played a big role in the failure of a large Ukrainian offensive in 2023.

In March, the defense ministers of the three Baltic and Poland countries, all members of NATO, said the need to withdraw from the Ottawa Treaty, citing the increase in “military threats to the member countries of NATO bordering Russia and Belarus”. Finland announced the same intention in April.

Ukraine, which joined the Treaty in 2006, saw little interest in pose anti -personnel mines before the failure of its 2023 offensive. Then, the Russian strategy of maximizing the use of infantrymen during its assaults changed it.

The Biden administration approved in 2024 the supply of modern American anti -personnel mines to Ukraine, which already has a stock of 3 million mines from the Soviet era.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announced this month that he had signed a decree aimed at withdrawing Ukraine from the Ottawa Treaty, because Russia, which has never signed the treaty, “uses anti-personnel mines with the greatest cynicism”.

This article was published in the New York Times.

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Consult the list of countries signatory to the Ottawa Treaty