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Poland, Baltic States to Exit Landmine Ban Treaty
April 2025
By Xiaodon Liang
The defense ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland announced March 18 that they would recommend withdrawal from the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty to their respective governments.
In a joint statement, the ministers said that “threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased” and withdrawal would “provide our defence forces flexibility and freedom of choice to potentially use new weapons systems and solutions to bolster the defence of the alliance’s vulnerable Eastern Flank.”
Nevertheless, the four countries will “remain committed to international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians during armed conflict,” the ministers said.
Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina confirmed March 18 that her government has “decided to initiate the process to withdraw” from the treaty, according to Latvian Public Media.
Tamar Gabelnick, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, strongly condemned Latvia’s move in a March 19 press release and questioned how the country would “uphold its obligations towards International Humanitarian Law by reintroducing a weapon that is unable to distinguish between civilian and military targets.”
Finland is also considering withdrawing from the treaty, Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen, told Reuters Dec. 18.
The Mine Ban Treaty, which is limited in scope to antipersonnel mines, prohibits their use, development, production, stockpiling, and transfer. The treaty entered into force in 1999 and has 165 states-parties.
The decision comes three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and follows recent suggestions by the United States that it might condition its collective defense commitments under the NATO alliance.
Speaking before the Polish parliament March 7, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Poland also was considering withdrawal from the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Although the Mine Ban Treaty permits withdrawals, countries must give six months’ notice and cannot be involved in ongoing armed conflict. Russia has used landmines extensively across Ukrainian territory, according to the landmine campaign’s Landmine Monitor 2024 report. In 2022, Human Rights Watch accused Ukraine of deploying mines by rocket.
Neither Russia nor the United States are states-parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, but Ukraine is. At the November 2024 review conference of the treaty’s states-parties, Ukraine reiterated its commitment to destroying its Soviet-era stockpile of landmines, of which some 4.3 million remain. In the same month, it received a first transfer of landmines from the United States. (See ACT, December 2024.)