Finland will start measures to acquire anti-personnel land mines and begin training its troops, including conscripts and reservists, to use them, its military announced on Jan. 14.

The move follows the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention that bans the explosive devices. The withdrawal took effect on Jan. 10.

“The goal is to have the first new mines and their exercise equipment available in the course of 2027,” the country’s Defence Forces said in a statement.

“New anti-personnel mines are intended to be developed in cooperation with the domestic defence industry with a further goal of manufacturing them in Finland.”

Training on how to use the mines will begin early this year, according to the statement.

“For the Defence Forces, anti-personnel landmines are one addition to our system in a time when strengthening defence capability is particularly important,” Col. Riku Mikkonen, inspector of engineers, said in the statement. “In the Defence Forces’ operations, anti-personnel mines will be made part of counter mobility, which involves blocking the enemy’s movement by means of anti-tank mines and various types of obstacles taking advantage of the natural obstacle value of the terrain.”

He said the devices would be used only under “emergency conditions” in “combat areas” and that training in peacetime would be conducted using training equipment rather than live mines.

Finland previously destroyed more than 1 million land mines after 2012, as it became the last European Union nation to sign the Ottawa agreement, which has been ratified or acceded to by more than 160 countries.
In 2025, Finland and several other European Union and NATO member states bordering or near Russia—Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland—opted to leave the Ottawa treaty amid concerns over the military threat posed by Moscow.

Finland shares the longest border with Russia of any NATO member, and its accession effectively doubled the alliance’s border with the Russian Federation.

One of NATO’s newest members, Finland joined the alliance in 2023 following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, ending decades of nonalignment for the Nordic country.

Russia has used land mines in its invasion of Ukraine, and in July, it accused Ukraine of doing so, too, after Kyiv also announced its withdrawal from the convention.

According to the United Nations, “Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world, with potentially 23 percent of its land at risk of contamination with landmines and unexploded ordnance.”
The organization estimates that clearing the unexploded mines and shells deployed during the war will cost about $34.6 billion.

The treaty, which was ratified in the Canadian capital in 1997, has the official title “The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction.”

The convention requires states to destroy their stockpiled land mines within four years and eliminate land mines currently planted in the soil within 10 years.

An “anti-personnel mine” is defined by the treaty as a “mine designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill one or more persons.”

Although the treaty is backed by the overwhelming majority of countries, non-signatories include the United States, China, Russia, India, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Finland’s decision to exit the treaty was criticized by campaign groups in 2025. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines called it a “dramatic reversal of Finland’s longstanding support for humanitarian disarmament and international law.”