An international treaty that has since 1999 banned the stockpiling or use of anti-personnel landmines, in the name of protecting civilians from explosives that lurk in the ground after conflicts end. It has been signed by more than 100 countries, though Russia never joined. Nor did neighbours including Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine.
In March 2025 the three Baltic republics—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—joined Poland in announcing their intention to withdraw from the treaty. In April Finland said it would quit too. Finland's defence ministry called landmines simple weapons suitable for Finnish armed forces that rely heavily on conscripts to secure its border with Russia.
A report by Policy Exchange, a London-based think-tank, called the Ottawa Convention a legacy of the "unipolar moment" after the Soviet Union's collapse, when great-power conflict seemed unthinkable. It criticised Britain's then government for dreaming naively of an age when troops would be needed only for peacekeeping, and charged Europeans with hypocrisy for abjuring landmines and cluster munitions, safe in the knowledge that their protector, America, retained those weapons.
Withdrawal from the convention is a six-month process that a country cannot pursue while it is at war.
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