"The war ends. The landmine goes on killing," said Jody Williams, who led the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, in her 1997 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. The Ottawa Treaty, signed that year, banned the use of anti-personnel landmines as well as the ability to "develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer" them, directly or indirectly.
It has since been ratified by 160 countries – but not by the US, China or Russia. And Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced his intention to withdraw from the pact, following similar decisions by Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
What did the commentators say?
These final five countries together guard 2,150 miles of Nato's frontier with Russia and its client state of Belarus. In the three years since the invasion of Ukraine, they have all made "significant investments to better secure these borders" with fences and surveillance, said DW. "Now, a new plan is in the works: landmines."
"Banning them might have been a luxury cause for a dominant West in the years of safety after the Cold War," said The Telegraph's David Blair, "yet no longer." As Europe re-arms to "deter" Vladimir Putin, "what was once unconscionable has become unavoidable": a "new 'Iron Curtain'" of millions of landmines.
Zelenskyy argues that the treaty has created an unequal situation that limits Ukraine's right to self-defence. The Kremlin has by far the world's largest stockpile of anti-personnel mines, with an estimated 26 million, and has deployed them with "utmost cynicism in Ukrainian territory", he said. Yet Kyiv is barred from using such mines, which are "often the instrument for which nothing can be substituted for defence purposes".
What next?
"Liberal-democratic" states across northern Europe "are in agreement", defence expert Francis Tusa said in The Independent: if Kyiv loses, Russia "may be emboldened to take military action against the Baltic states, Finland, or even Poland". Many defence specialists believe the timeline for such action would be "within three to five years".
But anti-landmine campaigners "worry this is part of a larger trend, with the rules of war and international humanitarian norms being eroded more broadly", said The Irish Times. As conflicts escalate around the world, "it is impossible not to feel that we are going backwards", said Josephine Dresner, director of policy with the Mines Advisory Group. | 
