Ukraine is joining other countries in the proximity of Russia in withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention, otherwise known as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty.
Ukraine thus joins Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, which all announced on 18 March 2025 that they would withdraw from the convention in light of the deteriorated security situation in Eastern Europe following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement on his official website on 29 June 2025 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that had had signed a degree enacting the decision of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council regarding the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention.
“Russia has never been a party to this convention and uses anti-personnel mines with extreme cynicism,” Zelenskyy stated. “And not just now, in its war against Ukraine – this has long been a trademark of Russian killers: to destroy life by every means available.”
The Ukrainian president added, “We are also aware of the complexities involved in withdrawing from such a convention, especially during wartime. But we are taking this political step and sending a signal by it to all our partners – this is where attention must be focused. This concerns all countries along Russia’s borders. It is anti-personnel mines that very often have no alternative as a tool for defense.”
Full withdrawal from the treaty is subject to Ukrainian parliamentary approval, which is not likely to hold up the decision.
A 10 June 2025 report by the international non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch stated, “Russian forces have used more than a dozen types of anti-personnel mines since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, causing thousands of civilian casualties and contaminating vast tracts of agricultural land. The anti-personnel mines have been emplaced by hand, delivered by rockets, and … dropped from drones.”
The Ottawa Convention, which bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel landmines, was enacted on 1 March 1999 and ultimately ratified by 165 countries, including Ukraine in 2005. However, Russia, China, the United States and several other countries did not sign it.
In November 2024 the US Biden Administration approved the provision of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine.
While Russia’s indiscriminate use of mines, along with other treaty-limited weapons such as cluster munitions, is one reason for Ukraine and other countries bordering Russia to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, another is the fact that in certain circumstances they can be an effective means of defence. Moreover, if minefields are properly documented, there is no reason why they should endanger civilians, even when geopolitical circumstances change and such defences become no longer necessary.
South Korea is generally regarded as the one clear situation where the use of anti-personnel mines has been deemed necessary. Such is the formidable size of the North Korean army, and so short is the distance from Seoul, the South Korean capital, to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas (24 km), that mines are regarded as a vital deterrent against Pyongyang attempting to reunify the Korean Peninsula by force.
For Ukraine, always short on manpower and often on the back foot against Russian offensives, it can thus be seen how mines – if used prudently and responsibly – could be part of the defensive equation.
For the Baltic states and Poland, meanwhile, mining their borders with Russia could give Moscow cause to rethink any intentions of the kind of invasion suffered by Ukraine in February 2022.
