A mine belt along the border with Russia and Belarus will guard NATO's eastern flank in the event of a Russian attack. Five of the six NATO countries in the region have already announced that they are leaving the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.
Since the start of Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine in February 2022, there has hardly been a more pressing question for NATO than how to better protect its eastern flank. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are five of the six NATO countries that border Russia and/or Belarus. Since 2022, they have already invested significantly in better protecting their borders - with fences and surveillance systems. Now they are resorting to another tool: landmines.
Russia’s neighbors are resuming landmine production
In recent months, the five NATO countries have gradually announced that they are withdrawing from the so-called Ottawa Convention. The treaty, concluded in 1997 and entered into force two years later, prohibits the production, use and sale of landmines. They are extremely controversial because, among other things, they indiscriminately strike both soldiers and civilians. Moreover, uncleared mines remain a long-term threat even after a conflict has long ended. In 2023 alone, almost 6,000 people worldwide were killed or injured by landmines, 80 percent of whom were civilians, including many children. Clearing the explosive devices is dangerous, expensive and extremely time-consuming.
The withdrawal of the five NATO countries from the convention will be officially announced this month. Only Norway, of Russia's neighbors, remains in the agreement for now. The Scandinavian country has an almost 200-kilometer common border with Russia. From the end of the year, the five withdrawing NATO members will be able to start producing and storing anti-personnel mines near their borders again.
A total of 164 countries in the world have signed the Ottawa Convention, while 33 have not. Among the non-signatories to the document are the United States, China and Russia. The Kremlin has the largest stockpile of anti-personnel mines in the world - an estimated 26 million. Many of them have already been used in Ukraine.
Millions of mines in forest areas?
According to the non-governmental organization Handicap International, 58 countries and individual regions are currently contaminated with anti-personnel mines. In some of them, the conflicts ended decades ago.
Now, in the worst case scenario, new vast territories could be contaminated within a few years - from Lapland in the north to the Polish province of Lublin in the south. The border between the five NATO countries and Russia and Belarus is about 3,500 kilometers long. Most of these areas are sparsely populated and densely forested, which makes it difficult to monitor the entire border strip.
The countries in the region fear that Russia may decide to attack one of them. Their concern is so great that they have now decided to resort to weapons that the world actually wants to ban and eliminate. According to the British "Telegraph" NATO experts are already analyzing the terrain for the future mine belt. The goal of NATO countries is maximum deterrence: together with other border security measures, this mine carpet should be able to inflict such heavy losses on the advancing enemy in the shortest possible time that it will refuse Moscow to attempt an offensive or wage a prolonged war.
A new Iron Curtain
The problem is that several million mines and booby traps would probably be needed to effectively protect this long stretch of the border. Large areas would become uninhabitable for decades, and the potential damage to people and the environment would be almost impossible to predict.
"The Telegraph" is already talking about a new, explosive Iron Curtain - like the heavily guarded border between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War. Because in addition to the minefield in question, the Eastern European NATO countries have taken many other measures to protect against possible Russian aggression: they have built border fences, installed modern surveillance and early warning systems, and increased their military contingents in the border areas.
Necessary or irresponsible?
One of the particularly vulnerable countries on NATO's eastern border is Lithuania. There, between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the west and Belarus to the east, lies the so-called Suwalki Corridor - the 65-kilometer-wide land link between Kaliningrad and Belarus, cutting off the three Baltic states from the rest of NATO territory. Fears that a possible Russian attack could take place here first are particularly high. That is why Lithuania alone plans to invest around 800 million euros in the production of new mines in the coming years. Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Šakalenė speaks of an "existential threat" for her country and recalls in this regard that while Europe has destroyed its own stockpiles in accordance with the Ottawa Convention, Russia has been producing more and more anti-personnel mines.
Eva Maria Fischer of Handicap International - Germany, however, considers all this to be a dangerous and worrying development. "Of course, the security concerns of Eastern European countries can be justified in the current unstable international context. But lasting security cannot be built on weapons that kill indiscriminately, remain in the ground long after the conflict ends, continue to maim civilians and destroy their livelihoods", she told DW.
Fischer believes there are alternatives to mine protection. "They may seem more expensive, but they are not, considering the enormous costs of all the follow-up activities after anti-personnel mines have been used," she also told DW.