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.
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A nightmare for the grandchildren who will lose limbs and lives over this primitive, abhorrent practice.
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.
You can't suggest that the Russian military is capable of using modern troop mobilization strategies. Or that mass media to the contrary might be a part of a racialized propaganda campaign to dehumanize conscripts in the opposition. Or that the Russians (who are curiously still closely aligned with the Saudis, the Israelis, the Indians, and a patchwork of far-right factions across Europe and Africa) aren't a distinct uniquely horrible imperialist faction that good liberal Europeans need to use all military options to obliterate at any cost.
Only a Russian bot or a paid shill or a Tankie idiot would make such a claim. Why, when I read a post like this, I question whether it could even be produced by a human at all. It must be the viewpoint from the deepest bowls of the Nine Hells.
there is no evidence that the RF is seeking to expand westward
It's weird to see NATO expand eastward for forty years, slowly gobbling up ex-Soviet states and replacing them with right-wing oligarchies and reactionary-lead business cartels. And then hearing how Russia is the expansionary power.
Weirder still to see the US bomb its way into Iraq, Afghanistan, and the length of North Africa, only to be told that armed opposition groups and disaffected insurgents are the product of Russian disinformation and imperialism.
If the US were to re-invade Vietnam, I genuinely do not know if folks on this sub would understand that the Vietcong and the Northern Vietnamese military were fighting for their independence and not some cat's-paw of Evil Internationalist Socialism seeking to rapaciously colonize the native peoples of the French Catholic South.
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.
presenting EU: the beacon of democracy to the world in the ugly face of US fascism
The article states that current generation landmines can be deactivated remotely and then removed easily, compared to old landmines that you could die trying to remove.
Edit: I have no clue why I’m being downvoted. I’m stating what the article states.
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