Europe is building a new ‘Iron Curtain’– with millions of landmines
Europe is building a new ‘Iron Curtain’– with millions of landmines
With the threat of Russia on their doorstep, five nations are bolstering their defences by turning to a tactic the world tried to ban
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have announced they will leave the Ottawa Convention of 1997, which prohibits anti-personnel landmines. Later in June, all five states are expected to give the United Nations formal notice of their withdrawal, allowing them to manufacture, stockpile and deploy such munitions from the end of the year. Together, they guard 2,150 miles of Nato’s frontier with Russia and its client state of Belarus.
Military planners are already working out which expanses of European forest and lake land would be planted with these deadly devices, laden with high explosives and shrapnel, if Vladimir Putin were to mass his forces against the alliance.
This is shocking. We are still removing mines left from ages past ...
Civilians end up paying the price for land mines
The headline of the article is misleading. No one is laying "pre-emptive" minefields at their borders for civilians to waltz in, withdrawal from the Ottawa agreement means that anti-personnel landmines are an option if Russia starts massing troops on their side of the border.
I've trained with landmines during my military service and they are truly horrible things. I hope we never have to use them again.
NATO sure like building useless walls eh
"client state of Belarus" ... In the last 4 yrs, I actually see a bit more of independence of Belarus from Moscow than Germany, Lithuania or Finland does from Washington DC.... Belorussian at least takes weeks or months to comply with Moscow's demands... it is always overnight for Europeans!
Militarily speaking, I don't see this being much of a deterrent either. In such a vast terrain, it would not be hard for Russia to get hold of one and reverse engineer it to disable it (presumably they will be remote controlled and disabled). But even with that, just a large unmanned machine can go in front triggering the mines and breach the line overnight. Again, due to the vast amount of land border and civilian population, it will be a very thin line. Of course, that takes the assumption that Russia had any interest of invading any land beyond Ukraine, that I would rate it as zero (unless invaded first or an total embargo on Kaliningrad!). After NATO's progress fiasco showed in Ukraine, I think from now, the industry and certain politicians just view NATO as a cash cow for the remaining of its existence and less and less expenses share of the pie will be for innovation and readiness.
And Belarus took decades to finally stop sitting on the fence and come for help to Russia in the first place. And this of course happened after months of coup attempts in 2020. Poland and Lithuania still do everything they can to harm Belarus short of military attack.
A nightmare for the grandchildren who will lose limbs and lives over this primitive, abhorrent practice.
We can only hope they log a GPS trace for each mine
many of these mines will end up being washed by some flood, unfortunately. and end up where they shouldn't get.
Blame Putin
It's that or being forced to meat-wave assault by the Russian empirialistic war-machine. Truly a shitty situation all-around
The "Russian Human Wave" narrative is based on Nazi propaganda from World War II, trying to draw a racist connection between the asiatic Russians and the Mongols, the idea of the "Mongol Horde." Neither the Red Army during World War II nor the modern Russian Federation use human wave tactics, the closest was the Tsarist army pre-Socialism.
Further, Russia is not trying to endlessly expand, they are trying to fully de-millitarize Ukraine as Ukraine was cozying up to NATO, and NATO promised long ago that it wouldn't expand eastward yet it has consistently done so over the last few decades, forming millitant encirclement of Russia by hostile countries that want Russia to open up its capital markets for foreign plundering. Further, the nationalist government of Ukraine was shelling ethnic Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk, both of which declared independence from Ukraine before Russia invaded.
Regardless of the morality of Russia going to war with Ukraine, there is no evidence that the RF is seeking to expand westward. This is just Red Scare 2.0 nonsense.
presenting EU: the beacon of democracy to the world in the ugly face of US fascism
Its a boom belt
Landmines? Smart, those never hurt anybody accidentally /s
When someone shambles to a hospital missing a limb, they can blame it on Russia who laid those landmines, I guess.