this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have announced they will leave the Ottawa Convention of 1997, which prohibits anti-personnel landmines. Later in June, all five states are expected to give the United Nations formal notice of their withdrawal, allowing them to manufacture, stockpile and deploy such munitions from the end of the year. Together, they guard 2,150 miles of Nato’s frontier with Russia and its client state of Belarus.

Military planners are already working out which expanses of European forest and lake land would be planted with these deadly devices, laden with high explosives and shrapnel, if Vladimir Putin were to mass his forces against the alliance.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Civilians end up paying the price for land mines

[–] Lorindol@sopuli.xyz 9 points 5 days ago

The headline of the article is misleading. No one is laying "pre-emptive" minefields at their borders for civilians to waltz in, withdrawal from the Ottawa agreement means that anti-personnel landmines are an option if Russia starts massing troops on their side of the border.

I've trained with landmines during my military service and they are truly horrible things. I hope we never have to use them again.

[–] reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.ml 17 points 5 days ago

This is shocking. We are still removing mines left from ages past ...

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 46 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (23 children)

A nightmare for the grandchildren who will lose limbs and lives over this primitive, abhorrent practice.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 18 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

presenting EU: the beacon of democracy to the world in the ugly face of US fascism

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

We can only hope they log a GPS trace for each mine

[–] vfreire85@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

many of these mines will end up being washed by some flood, unfortunately. and end up where they shouldn't get.

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[–] highduc@lemmy.ml 26 points 6 days ago

Landmines? Smart, those never hurt anybody accidentally /s

[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 days ago

NATO sure like building useless walls eh

[–] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 16 points 5 days ago

Its always projection with these people.

[–] edel@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

"client state of Belarus" ... In the last 4 yrs, I actually see a bit more of independence of Belarus from Moscow than Germany, Lithuania or Finland does from Washington DC.... Belorussian at least takes weeks or months to comply with Moscow's demands... it is always overnight for Europeans!

Militarily speaking, I don't see this being much of a deterrent either. In such a vast terrain, it would not be hard for Russia to get hold of one and reverse engineer it to disable it (presumably they will be remote controlled and disabled). But even with that, just a large unmanned machine can go in front triggering the mines and breach the line overnight. Again, due to the vast amount of land border and civilian population, it will be a very thin line. Of course, that takes the assumption that Russia had any interest of invading any land beyond Ukraine, that I would rate it as zero (unless invaded first or an total embargo on Kaliningrad!). After NATO's progress fiasco showed in Ukraine, I think from now, the industry and certain politicians just view NATO as a cash cow for the remaining of its existence and less and less expenses share of the pie will be for innovation and readiness.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

And Belarus took decades to finally stop sitting on the fence and come for help to Russia in the first place. And this of course happened after months of coup attempts in 2020. Poland and Lithuania still do everything they can to harm Belarus short of military attack.

[–] m532@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Finland in 10 years: Let's attack russia. Sieg hBOOM

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago

First as tragedy, then as farce.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 6 days ago

When someone shambles to a hospital missing a limb, they can blame it on Russia who laid those landmines, I guess.

[–] Mangoholic@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 days ago

Its a boom belt

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Even if it was true that Russia was going to invade them, which is not, what are landmines going to do to a modern army lmao.

[–] wuphysics87@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 days ago (6 children)

A pragmatic low cost solution in light of the usa threat of forcing the european members of nato to "pay their fair share". But what prevents russia from detonating them with drones? This isn't ds9. They (presumably) aren't self replicating.

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