Poland formally withdraws from Ottawa Convention on landmines, citing Russian threat

Poland will use mines and landmines to protect its eastern border from a growing threat from Russia, Poland’s deputy defense minister said on Friday, as the country formally withdrew from an international convention banning the use of the controversial weapon.

The 1997 Landmine Ban Convention, also known as the Ottawa Convention, prohibits signatories from keeping or using anti-personnel mines, which can last for years and are known to cause great suffering among civilians in former conflict zones in countries including Cambodia, Angola and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Poland, which ratified the document in 2012 and ended the destruction of anti-personnel mines in 2016, withdrew from the treaty on Friday and said it plans to resume production weapons.

“These mines are one of the most important elements of the defense structure we are building on the eastern side of NATO, Poland, on the border with Russia in the north and Belarus in the east,” said Pawel Zalewski, Poland’s deputy defense minister.

He said Poland needed to defend itself against Russia, a country that has “very aggressive intentions against its neighbours” and has never committed to an international treaty banning landmines.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, neighboring countries have been reassessing their participation in the international agreement. Last year, Warsaw joined Finland, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Ukraine in announcing that they would leave the agreement.

We are not an aggressive country but we must use all means to stop Russia.– Pawel Zalewski, deputy minister of defense in Poland

Landmines are explosive weapons that are placed on or under the ground and detonate when a person or vehicle falls on them. Anti-tank mines, designed not to be triggered by human weight, are not prohibited by the Ottawa Convention.

Russia is one of the nearly thirty countries that have not ratified the Ottawa agreement, along with the United States, which during the first administration of Donald Trump announced a new policy authorizing military commanders to use landmines that are “non-persistent,” meaning they have built-in mechanisms to destroy or defuse the mine after a certain period of time.

The US, towards the end of Joe Biden’s presidential term, announced that it would provide anti-personnel mines to Ukraine to help delay the Russian military advance.

Part of the Eastern Shield strategy

Zalewski said Poland would begin domestic production of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, adding that the government would cooperate with Polish manufacturers. He said that Poland intends to be independent.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday that Poland would “soon be able” to have the ability to mine its eastern borders within 48 hours in the event of a threat. Tusk spoke after attending an exhibition of Bluszcz, an unmanned vehicle designed to deploy anti-tank mines produced by Polish company Belma SA and a military research institute.

Given the length of the country’s eastern borders, Zalewski said, “a lot” of landmines would be needed.

Poland plans to repair the mine tops as part of the so-called Eastern Shield, a system of advanced fortifications Poland has been building on its borders with Belarus and Russia since 2024, Zalewski said.

But he said Poland would only send mines across its borders “when there is a real threat of Russian aggression.”

“We respect our environment very much and we don’t want to put it aside for the daily use of Polish citizens,” Zalewski said.

Human rights groups have condemned the move to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, saying anti-personnel mines pose a serious threat to civilians.

But Zalewski responded that the country is acting in a balanced manner by keeping the mines stocked unless the country is under attack.

“We are not an aggressive country,” he said, “but we must use all means to stop Russia.”