Five NATO states quit landmine treaty as Ukraine war redraws European security

The Ottawa Treaty, once held up as the gold standard of humanitarian arms control, is fraying at the edges. In the space of a year, five European NATO members that share a border with Russia, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, have formally notified their withdrawal from the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. Ukraine has done the same, though the treaty's war clause means its departure will not take legal effect until a peace agreement is signed. The decisions, all taken in 2025, mark the first time European states have abandoned the convention since it entered into force in 1999.

A treaty built on stigma, now tested by war

The Ottawa Convention was negotiated in a burst of post-Cold War optimism. By 1999, roughly 25,000 people a year were being killed or maimed by landmines, many of them civilians in post-conflict zones from Cambodia to Bosnia. The treaty's central bargain was simple: states parties would never use, produce, transfer or stockpile anti-personnel mines, and would destroy existing stockpiles within four years. One hundred and sixty-six countries ratified it. The major military powers, Russia, China, India and the United States, stayed out.

For more than two decades the stigma worked. Even non-parties such as the United States largely observed the norm, and global casualty figures dropped sharply. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 changed the calculus in capitals from Warsaw to Helsinki. The argument, articulated most bluntly by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is that a defensive alliance cannot afford to forego a weapon that an adversary uses freely. Russia has laid mines extensively across occupied Ukrainian territory, and has never signed the treaty.

Ukraine's legal limbo and the reality on the ground

Ukraine's withdrawal announcement came with a explicit justification. Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Verkhovna Rada's national security committee, told parliament: "We cannot remain bound under conditions when the enemy has no restrictions." The treaty's Article 20 stipulates that if a state party is engaged in armed conflict, its withdrawal takes effect only after the conflict ends. That puts Kyiv in a legal grey zone: formally still a party, practically acting as if it were not. UNMAS, the UN mine action service, reports that as of mid-2025 approximately 25% of Ukraine's territory is affected by mines and explosive remnants of war, covering both government-controlled and Russian-occupied areas in the east and southeast. Since February 2022, over 1,150 civilians have been killed or injured by mines and ERW, and the agency estimates full demining will cost just under $35 billion over ten years.

The Baltic and Nordic calculation

For Poland and the Baltic states, the decision is rooted in historical memory as much as current threat perception. All four were occupied or dominated by the Soviet Union; all four view Russia's revisionist posture as existential. Poland has gone furthest. Tusk has said repeatedly that Warsaw wants the ability to mine its eastern frontier rapidly. The state-owned defence firm Belma has been contracted to produce anti-personnel mines in large quantities. Lithuania has announced it will resume manufacture and procurement. Finland, which joined NATO in 2023 after decades of military non-alignment, has taken a more conditional line: if mines are necessary, the military says, they must be laid responsibly, with accurate mapping and precise demining plans.

The problem with 'smart' mines

Finnish officials argue that modern mines with integrated sensors and self-deactivation mechanisms reduce long-term risk. Simone Wisotzki of the Leibniz Peace Research Institute (PRIF) in Frankfurt is sceptical. "That's why I'm very critical of this and say that even new technologies present problems that, in turn, make mine clearance more difficult," she told DW. "In practice, mines are always laid in areas that are also used by civilians. They then remain in those territories and then injure civilians disproportionately." The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, the treaty's civil society watchdog, notes that while legacy contamination from the Yugoslav wars and other conflicts is slowly being cleared, new mines are being laid in Ukraine and in Myanmar, adding to the global burden.

A wider unravelling of European arms control

The Ottawa Treaty withdrawals do not sit in isolation. In the past few years three major US-Russia agreements have expired or been terminated: the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned ground-launched missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres; the New START nuclear reduction treaty; and the Treaty on Open Skies, which allowed mutual observation flights. In 2023 Russia's withdrawal effectively ended the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which had set limits on heavy equipment across the continent. Wisotzki puts it starkly: "Humanitarian arms control, which includes the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, was in effect the only area that could still be said to be working. And that is no longer the case."

The precedent and the numbers

The Monitor's preliminary analysis for 2025 records more than 5,000 casualties globally, the majority civilians. In South Sudan, 90% of victims last year were children. Landmines are designed to injure rather than kill, an injured soldier consumes more enemy resources than a dead one, but in peacetime that logic reverses: the weapon becomes a persistent threat to the civilian population. Decades after the Yugoslav wars ended, Bosnia and Herzegovina still records casualties. The five NATO withdrawals, Wisotzki argues, give cover to any other state facing a security crisis to follow suit. If the treaty's European backers, historically its most vocal champions, can leave, the norm's universalising logic collapses.