Latvia’s Parliament, citing Russian aggression against Ukraine, voted on Wednesday to pull out of an international convention banning anti-personnel mines, starting what is expected to be a rush of departures by Eastern European nations that border Russia or its closest ally, Belarus.
The vote in Parliament made Latvia the first country in the region to act on a decision taken last month by three Baltic States and Poland to quit the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of land mines.
Defense ministers from the four countries, all members of NATO, said in March that they needed to pull out of the accord because “military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased” after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Finland has since said it plans to leave, too.
The mass exit of the five countries would deliver a serious blow to hopes spawned by the end of the Cold War that a relaxation of East-West tensions would help banish anti-personnel mines, cluster bombs and other weapons that can take a high toll on civilians.
The Ottawa convention was one of a series of international agreements reached in the 1990s to encourage global disarmament, though major military powers, including the United States, Russia and China, never ratified it.
The push to leave has been led by Lithuania, which borders both Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad. The Baltic country has grown increasingly worried about defending its territory in the event of an attack. The movement to exit the convention began after a visit to Ukraine’s border with Belarus in August last year by Laurynas Kasciunas, Lithuania’s defense minister at the time.
Mr. Kasciunas said in an interview on Wednesday that Ukrainian military personnel had explained to him how difficult it was to defend borders without land mines, recalling that they had told him: “Get out of all these conventions — Russia follows no laws or customs of war. Do it while you still have time.”
Lithuania has since withdrawn from a separate treaty banning cluster munitions, and its Parliament is scheduled to vote this week on leaving the land mine convention, too.
Latvia’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that the vote by Parliament in favor of withdrawal would give the country “greater freedom of choice and operational flexibility protecting borders,” adding that “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has significantly worsened the security situation in the region.”
Poland, the region’s biggest and most militarily powerful country, has also cited what it sees as the threat from Russia and said it wants out of the Ottawa convention.
“Poland’s hands cannot be tied,” the country’s defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, said during a news conference last month.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has seen widespread use of land mines by both sides and highlighted their effectiveness, particularly as a defense. A broad belt of dense minefields in southern Ukraine stymied a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 and gravely wounded a large but undisclosed number of Ukrainian soldiers.
Tomas Dapkus contributed reporting from Vilnius, Lithuania.
Andrew Higgins is the East and Central Europe bureau chief for The Times based in Warsaw. He covers a region that stretches from the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Kosovo, Serbia and other parts of former Yugoslavia.
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