The War in Ukraine Challenges the Treaty to Ban Landmines

In a trench war like that of Ukraine, it has become clear that mines are an essential weapon to stop the enemy. The Russian and Ukrainian armies are using them massively along the 1,200 kilometers of the front. It is a fundamental resource to freeze the combat line or to slow down infantry advances, especially in the Russian offensive. In light of this evidence, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this Sunday that his country would withdraw from the United Nations Convention that prohibits the use and production of anti-personnel mines.

The war in Ukraine has left in hours casualties from this Convention, approved in 1997 in Ottawa (Canada). Five countries in the European Union—Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland—have expressed their intention to withdraw their signatures from the treaty. The governments of the last four mentioned countries approved a joint statement last March recommending that they exit the convention against the proliferation of anti-personnel mines: “The security situation in our region has seriously deteriorated. Military threats against NATO neighbors of Russia and Belarus have clearly increased. It is essential to evaluate all measures to strengthen our deterrence and defense capabilities.”

A total of 166 states are signatories to the Ottawa Treaty. The three major military powers in the world—United States, China, and Russia—along with India and Pakistan, are not among them. This agreement, under the supervision of the UN, was created to eradicate the use of anti-personnel mines, due to the high number of civilian casualties they cause. According to a report from the International Red Cross this June, 80% of the injured by these mines worldwide are civilians. The UN estimates that in the more than three years of the Russian invasion, mines have caused 1,500 injuries and deaths among the Ukrainian population.

The number of casualties among military personnel from these explosives is far higher than among civilians. Roman Kuziv, a lieutenant colonel in the Ukrainian army’s medical forces, explained last March to Adolfo Kunjuk News that mines are the second leading cause of casualties at the front, after drones. These unmanned vehicles account for up to 50% of the casualties, according to Kuziv. A report this June from the U.S. strategic analysis center CSIS states that the total military casualties of Russia and Ukraine, including injuries and deaths, amount to 1.4 million.

Mining with Drones

The primary system currently used by both sides to mine the front is through drones, both aerial and ground-based, which drop mines along paths and around positions where infantry or light vehicles must travel.

The NGO Human Rights Watch estimates that Ukraine currently has around 3.3 million anti-personnel mines inherited from the Soviet Union. Until the invasion began in 2022, Kiev had destroyed more than 2.5 million of these Soviet explosives. It caused controversy in November 2024 when the White House under former President Joe Biden transferred anti-personnel mines to the Armed Forces of Ukraine for the first time.

Oleksii Reznikov, former Minister of Defense of Ukraine, reiterated last January that his country would need at least 30 years to completely clear mines. Even today, it is common to see demining teams in agricultural fields in provinces like Kiev, Zhytomyr, or Chernihiv, which ceased to experience fighting in 2022. Zelensky stated that his army has no choice but to use this weaponry against an enemy “that has never been a participant in the Ottawa Convention and that uses anti-personnel mines with extreme cynicism.”

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement admitting that abandoning the Treaty “is a difficult but necessary political decision”: “Since 2022, when Russia launched its large-scale invasion of our state, the massive use of this weaponry by them has given an asymmetric advantage to the aggressor.” “We emphasize that when Ukraine ratified the Ottawa Convention [in 2005], these circumstances did not exist and could not be foreseen.”

Analysts consulted for this article agree that it is unthinkable for the Ukrainian army to renounce anti-personnel mines. “Their use is crucial today because it is the way to halt Russian infantry assaults. In a mined area, the advance of their soldiers is slower, allowing them to be eliminated with drones,” illustrates Mykhailo Samus, director of the Ukrainian defense analysis center New Geopolitics.

Samus states that the Ukrainian General Staff has done everything possible to avoid the use of these anti-personnel mines, and in the first two years of the war (2022-2023), their deployment was much lower. At that time, the focus was on anti-tank mines because Russian assaults were based on armored attacks.

Both armies have sidelined tanks since 2024, as they are easy targets for bomb drones. The assault tactics used by both armies focus on small, harder-to-detect infantry units, including those mounted on motorcycles. “The basic reason for withdrawing from the anti-mine convention stems from Russian tactics, which emphasize the use of disposable infantry,” says Mykola Bielieskov, a Ukrainian researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and an analyst for the NGO Come Back Alive. “If used intelligently, anti-personnel mines reduce the pressure on forward Ukrainian positions.”

Despite the military logic, disarmament organizations have raised their criticisms since the governments of the Baltic countries, Poland, and Finland announced last spring their intention to withdraw from the Ottawa Treaty. “The global prohibitions on anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions are two of the most significant humanitarian achievements of the post-Cold War and have saved tens of thousands of lives, but today these hard-won norms are under threat,” states a manifesto from June 16 by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munitions (ICBL-CMC).

“Five states in the Baltic region have initiated the process of withdrawing from these treaties. This could lead others to do the same,” warns the ICBL-CMC. Ukrainian authorities have specifically highlighted the prior announcements from these allies as a reason for deciding to exit the Ottawa Convention.