In a trench warfare like Ukraine, it has become clear that mines are an essential weapon to stop the enemy. Russian and Ukrainian armies. It is a fundamental resource to freeze the combat line or for infantry advances, especially in the Russian offensive, are slow. Given this evidence, President Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, announced this Sunday that his country will retire from the United Nations Convention that prohibits the use and production of antipersonnel mines.
The war in Ukraine has left in hours. Five countries of the European Union – Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland – have explained their intention to withdraw their signing of the treaty. The governments of the last four countries mentioned approved a joint statement last March in which they recommend leaving the Convention against the proliferation of antipersonnel mines: “The security situation in our region has suffered serious deterioration. Military threats against NATO members of Russia and Belarus have been clearly increased. It is essential to evaluate all measures to strengthen our defense and defense capacities.”
A total of 166 states are signatories of the Ottawa Treaty. They are not the three great military powers of the world – United States, China and Russia – nor did India or Pakistan. This agreement, under the supervision of the UN, was created to eradicate the use of antipersone mines, for the high number of civil victims they cause. According to a report by the International Red Cross of this June, 80% of those injured by these mines in the world are civil. The UN estimates that in the more than three years of Russian invasion, the mines have caused 1,500 injured and dead among the population of Ukraine.
The loss figure among military personnel for these explosives is far superior to that of civilians. Roman Kuziv, Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Forces of the Ukrainian Army, explained last March to El País. These unmanned devices account for up to 50% of the casualties, according to Kuziv. According to a report of this June of the American Strategic Analysis Center CSIS, the total military casualties in Russia and Ukraine, between injured and dead, is 1.4 million.
Mined by drones
The main system currently used by both contenders to undermine the front is by drones, both aerial and land, which drop the mines on the trails and areas around positions where the infantry or light vehicles must travel.
The NGO Human Rights Watch estimates that Ukraine today has about 3.3 million antipersonnel mines inherited from the Soviet Union. kyiv had destroyed until the beginning of the invasion, in 2022, more than 2.5 million of these Soviet explosives. It already caused controversy in November 2024 that the White House of the former president to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Oleksii Reznikov, former Minister of Defense of Ukraine, reiterated last January that his country would need at least 30 years to deminate completely. Even today it is common to see demining teams in agricultural fields in provinces such as kyiv, Zhitómir or Chernihiv, who stopped suffering in 2022. Zelenski said that his army has no choice but to use this armament before an enemy “that has never been a participant in the Ottawa convention and that it uses the antipersonnel mines with extreme cynicism”.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement by admitting that abandoning the treaty “is a difficult, but necessary political decision.” “Since 2022, when Russia launched the large -scale invasion of our state, the massive use of this weapons on its part gave an asymmetric advantage to the aggressor,” he adds. “We emphasize that these circumstances did not exist and could not be expected.”
“It is undoubtedly a difficult decision, which at the ethical level can be problematic, but Ukraine needs this resource to defend itself, at the tactical level there is no other solution because if you do not use it, it would be to open the doors to the Russian army,” concludes the French general in the Jérôme Pellistrandi reserve.
Analysts consulted for this article agree that it is unthinkable that the Ukrainian army can renounce the antipersone mines. “Its use is crucial today because it is the way to stop the assaults of the Russian infantry. In a mined zone, the progress of its soldiers is slower and allows them to be eliminated with drones,” illustrates Mikhail Samus, director of the Ukrainian Center for New Geopolitics defense analysis.
Samus affirms that the Ukrainian General Staff has done everything possible to avoid the use of these antipersone mines and that in the first two years of the war (2022-2023), its deployment was much lower. At that time he bet on anti -tank mines, because Russian assaults were based on armored attack.
Both armies have left combat cars in the background since 2024, because they are easy prey for bomb drones. The tactic used assault by both armies focuses on small infantry units more difficult to detect, even motorcycles. “The basic reason for withdrawing from the antiminas convention derives from Russian tactics, which emphasize the use of disposable infantry,” says Mikola Bielieskov, Ukrainian researcher of the National Institute of Strategic Studies and NGO analyst Come Back Alive. “If they are used intelligently, antipersonnel mines reduce pressure on advanced Ukraine positions.”
Despite the military logic, organizations for disarmament are raising their criticism since the governments of the Baltic countries, Poland and Finland communicated last spring their intention to abandon the Treaty of Otawa. “The global prohibitions of antipersonnel land mines and hunning ammunition are two of the most significant humanitarian achievements of the cold postwar period and have saved tens of thousands of lives, but today these rules, achieved with so much effort, are threatened,” for the prohibition of terrestrial mines and hunter of cluster (ICBL-CMC, in its acronym in English).
“Five states of the Baltic region have initiated the process of withdrawal of these treaties. This could lead others to do the same,” warns the ICBL-CMC. The Ukrainian authorities have highlighted precisely the previous announcements of these allies to make the decision to leave the Ottawa Convention.
Pellistrandi believes that the Ukrainian use of these mines, such as the one that would carry out neighboring countries to Russia, does not contradict the basic purpose of the Ottawa treaty: “These mines are not used in civil areas and is to deter an aggressor army. Its purpose is defensive, to protect its territory, and the Russian threat exists.”
