(Corrects final bullet point to ‘gravely concerned’ from ‘deeply concerned’)
By Andrius Sytas and Barbara Erling
VILNIUS/WARSAW (Reuters) – NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia plan to withdraw from the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel landmines due to the military threat from their neighbour Russia, the four countries said on Tuesday.
Quitting the 1997 treaty, which has been ratified or acceded to by more than 160 nations, will allow Poland and the three Baltic countries to start stockpiling and using landmines again.
“Military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased,” the countries’ defence ministers said in a joint statement.
“With this decision we are sending a clear message: our countries are prepared and can use every necessary measure to defend our security needs.”
The planned withdrawal was done to allow the effective protection of the region’s borders, Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovile Sakaliene said in a separate statement. All four countries share borders with Russia. Poland, Lithuania and Latvia also share borders with Moscow’s ally Belarus.
The announcement comes as Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of concluding a 30-day ceasefire and may move towards a more permanent end to the three-year-old conflict sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Poland and the Baltics are concerned that an end to the war in Ukraine could lead Russia to re-arm and target them instead. All four were under Moscow’s dominion during the Cold War.
GLOBAL DISARMAMENT
The 1997 Ottawa Convention was one of a series of international agreements concluded after the end of the Cold War to encourage global disarmament. Anti-landmine campaigners won the Nobel Peace Prize that same year. Mines have killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians across the globe, many of them long after conflicts have ended.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was “gravely concerned” by the move.
“Reintroducing these appalling weapons would be a deeply troubling step backward,” Cordula Droege, ICRC’s Chief Legal Officer, told Reuters. “Anti-personnel mines have limited military utility but devastating humanitarian consequences.”
Russia, the United States, China, India and Israel are among the countries who have not signed or ratified it.
In 2008, the Convention on Cluster Munitions – explosive weapons that release smaller submunitions over a vast area – was adopted. Like landmines, they do not discriminate between combatants and civilians.
The United States, which did not sign that convention, in 2023 transferred cluster munitions to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia.
FINLAND COULD FOLLOW
Other countries could follow Poland and the Baltics in using anti-personnel landmines again.
Finland, the last EU state to sign the Ottawa Convention, in 2012, has said it was mulling pulling out of the treaty too, citing Russia’s use of such weapons in Ukraine as the reason. Finland shares a 1,340 km (833 mile) border with Russia.
“We have examined very closely through intelligence how Russia operates in Ukraine, specifically their mass use of infantry and also their mass use of mines,” Finnish Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen told Reuters in December.
“This infantry issue is one thing that argued for the fact that it’s worth examining the use of anti-personnel mines,” he said.
The Finnish parliament’s defence committee chair Jukka Kopra said on Tuesday the decision by Poland and the Baltics was “good and wise”.
Poland said it could withdraw from the Ottawa Convention by passing legislation through parliament and securing the president’s approval, followed by formal notification to the U.N. The withdrawal would take effect six months later.
In Estonia, the government needs to propose the law and parliament needs to vote on it, its foreign ministry said.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Barbara Erling and Alan Charlish in Warsaw, Anne Kauranen and Essi Lehto in Helsinki, Emma Farge and Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva, writing by Gwladys Fouche, editing by Angus MacSwan, Terje Solsvik, Alexandra Hudson)
