Poland quits land mine treaty amid Russian threat
WARSAW, POLAND—Poland will use antipersonnel as well as antitank landmines to defend its eastern border against the growing threat from Russia, Poland’s deputy defense minister told The Associated Press (AP) on Friday, as the country officially left an international convention banning the use of the controversial weapons.
The 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention, prohibits signatories from keeping or using antipersonnel mines, which can last for years and are known for having caused large-scale suffering among civilians in former conflict zones in countries including Cambodia, Angola and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Poland, which ratified the document in 2012 and completed the destruction of its domestic antipersonnel mine stockpile in 2016, withdrew from the treaty on Friday and says it plans to renew manufacturing weapons.
“These mines are one of the most important elements of the defense structure we are constructing on the eastern flank of Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), in Poland, on the border with Russia in the north and with Belarus in the east,” Paweł Zalewski, Poland’s deputy defense minister, said.
He said Poland needed to defend itself against Russia, a country which “has very aggressive intentions vis a vis its neighbors” and which itself never committed to the international land mine ban treaty.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, nearby countries have been reassessing their participation in the international treaty.
Last year, Warsaw joined Finland, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and Ukraine to announce it would leave the treaty.
Russia is one of nearly three dozen countries that have never acceded to the Ottawa treaty, alongside the United States.
