Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced his country might soon quit the Ottawa Treaty banning antipersonnel landmines amid his country\u2019s war with Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia has never been a party to this convention and uses antipersonnel mines with extreme cynicism,\u201d he said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
This was not a mere rhetorical flourish. In August 2023, Russian soldiers booby-trapped the bodies of their fallen comrades with anti-personnel mines as they retreated to kill the Ukrainian sappers who discovered them.<\/p>\n
Ukraine needs to even the battlefield, Zelenskyy said, because \u201cantipersonnel mines \u2026 very often have no alternative as a tool for defence.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is the special role of antipersonnel landmines? Why are they banned in many countries? Why is Ukraine leaving the treaty now, and what will that allow it to do in its own defence?<\/p>\n
What is the Ottawa Treaty?<\/p>\n
The Ottawa Treaty of December 1997 bans the use of anti-personnel landmines, as well as the ability to \u201cdevelop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, anti-personnel mines\u201d.<\/p>\n
The treaty has been ratified by more than 160 countries and is part of the body of international law enshrined in the United Nations. As its name suggests, it aims to abolish landmines.<\/p>\n
Major powers like China, Russia and the United States have never signed it although the US did agree to stop stockpiling antipersonnel landmines under President Barack Obama, a move reversed by his successor Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
The rationale behind banning landmines is that they are indiscriminate killers.<\/p>\n
\u201cLandmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian \u2013 a woman, a child,\u201d said Jody Williams<\/a>, who coordinated the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which led to the Ottawa Treaty.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the use of the weapon might be militarily justifiable during the day of the battle, \u2026 once peace is declared, the landmine does not recognise that peace,\u201d Williams said when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. \u201cThe war ends. The landmine goes on killing.\u201d<\/p>\n They are not the first weapons to be banned. Chemical agents were banned after World War I in the Geneva Convention of 1925 because the use of chlorine gas by the Germans had led to devastatingly painful injuries.<\/p>\n Zelenskyy has accused Russia of violating the ban on chemical weapons use as well, a charge Moscow has rejected.<\/p>\n How will leaving the Ottawa Treaty help Ukraine defend itself?<\/p>\n The treaty prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. Ukraine, which ratified the treaty in 2005, has already returned to their use. In November, the US supplied Ukraine<\/a> with landmines.<\/p>\n At the time, this was because of a drop in Russian use of mechanised armour and an increase in the use of foot soldiers.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t lead with their mechanised forces any more. They lead with dismounted forces who are able to close in and do things to kind of pave the way for mechanised forces,\u201d then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin<\/a> said, explaining the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s what the Ukrainians are seeing right now. And they have a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n Leaving the treaty will allow Ukraine to produce and stockpile landmines. The move points towards a scaled-up and more permanent use.<\/p>\n The effectiveness of landmines became apparent in June 2023 when Ukraine launched a counteroffensive intended to take back swaths of Russian-occupied territory.<\/p>\n The counteroffensive failed largely because Russian defenders had dug themselves into trenches but also because they had planted minefields that went on for several kilometres before their positions.<\/p>\n Russian Major General Ivan Popov<\/a>, commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District, said Russian minefields played a \u201cvery important role\u201d in defeating the initial Ukrainian advance.<\/p>\n NATO\u2019s then-Military Committee chief, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer<\/a>, confirmed that mines had been a major obstacle.<\/p>\n By July, Ukraine had abandoned<\/a> efforts to punch mechanised columns through Russian defences and focused on wearing Russian defenders down over time.<\/p>\n Why is Ukraine leaving the Ottawa Treaty now?<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s move comes amid a spate of departures from the treaty. Poland and the Baltic states \u2013 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania \u2013 announced<\/a> in March that they would leave the treaty, saying the security situation in the region has \u201cfundamentally deteriorated\u201d.<\/p>\n Finland followed<\/a> the following month to \u201cprepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way\u201d.<\/p>\n All share a border with Russia or with Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a bunch of countries that are already going out from the Ottawa agreement on using these kinds of landmines. It\u2019s normal,\u201d said Victoria Vdovychenko, a defence expert at Cambridge University\u2019s Centre for Geopolitics.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means that these countries are prioritising their national security and they are prioritising that it can be used in the context of potential warfare,\u201d she told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert at the think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera these countries being a party to the Ottawa Treaty was a way of proving their political credentials to join Western clubs, such as NATO and the European Union.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had to sign up to prove membership of the club,\u201d he said, \u201cand so were reluctant to do anything which didn\u2019t have them as the most forward-leading, liberal, progressive members of that club.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody that wanted to sign up to doing what seemed right in the eyes of the global liberal elite would have done things like this whether or not it made long-term strategic sense,\u201d Giles said, \u201cpersuaded, of course, by NATO that they wanted to focus on expeditionary operations and Russia would never be a problem again.\u201d<\/p>\n The timing of the Eastern European countries\u2019 departure is related to threat assessments shared by NATO countries.<\/p>\n