Land Mines, a Cold War Horror, Could Return to Fortify Europe’s Borders

For decades, borders seeded with antipersonnel mines divided the Soviet bloc from the West, deterring citizens from fleeing across the Iron Curtain.

At the end of the Cold War, the mines were painstakingly dug up along the long frontier of the collapsed bloc. Anti-mine campaigners, helped in their cause by Diana, Princess of Wales, pushed world leaders to hammer out a global treaty banning a deadly weapon that indiscriminately kills civilians.

Now, in yet another consequence of Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, five countries bordering Russia plan to revive the use of a weapon prohibited by most countries for more than a quarter of a century, hoping to strengthen their defenses against Russian attack.

Recent moves by Poland, the three Baltic States and Finland — and a vow by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — to quit a mine ban treaty that came into force in 1999 won’t result in any immediate surge in the use of antipersonnel mines. Formally leaving the treaty is a six-month process.

But the recent rush of countries rejecting a pillar of the post-Cold War order has outraged anti-mine campaigners.

“We are furious with these countries,” said Tamar Gabelnick, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which in 1997 won a Nobel Peace Prize for its work clearing antipersonnel weapons and its role as the driving force behind the Mine Ban Treaty, known as the Ottawa Convention.