Finland's Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to pull out of a major international treaty on antipersonnel land mines, or APLs, as the Nordic country seeks to boost its defenses against an increasingly assertive Russia next door. Finland, which joined NATO in 2023, shares an 830-mile land border with Russia and says land mines could be used to defend its vast and rugged terrain in the event of an attack, per the AP. Finnish lawmakers voted 157-18 to move forward on a government proposal to leave the Ottawa Convention that seeks to end the use of APLs across the globe.
The Nordics and Baltics have been sounding the alarm on a potential Russian incursion since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Analysts say Ukraine is among the countries most affected by land mines and discarded explosives, as a result of Russia's ongoing war. The Ottawa Convention was signed in 1997 and went into force in 1999. Nearly three dozen countries haven't acceded to it, including some key current and past producers and users of land mines such as the United States, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea, and Russia.
In a report released last year by Landmine Monitor, the international watchdog said land mines were still actively being used in 2023 and 2024 by Russia, Myanmar, Iran, and North Korea. In the Baltics, lawmakers in Latvia and Lithuania earlier this year voted to exit the treaty. Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said civilians will pay the price if more countries leave the treaty. "The global consensus that once made antipersonnel mines a symbol of inhumanity is starting to fracture," she said in a news release earlier this week. "This is not just a legal retreat on paper—it risks endangering countless lives and reversing decades of hard-fought humanitarian progress."
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