Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have announced they will leave the Ottawa Convention of 1997, which prohibits anti-personnel landmines. Later in June, all five states are expected to give the United Nations formal notice of their withdrawal, allowing them to manufacture, stockpile and deploy such munitions from the end of the year. Together, they guard 2,150 miles of Nato’s frontier with Russia and its client state of Belarus.
Military planners are already working out which expanses of European forest and lake land would be planted with these deadly devices, laden with high explosives and shrapnel, if Vladimir Putin were to mass his forces against the alliance.
A nightmare for the grandchildren who will lose limbs and lives over this primitive, abhorrent practice.
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We can only hope they log a GPS trace for each mine
many of these mines will end up being washed by some flood, unfortunately. and end up where they shouldn’t get.
Blame Putin
They will
The article states that current generation landmines can be deactivated remotely and then removed easily, compared to old landmines that you could die trying to remove.
Edit: I have no clue why I’m being downvoted. I’m stating what the article states.
“The bluetooth device is disconnected”
“Your premium subscription for remote services has expired”
This would allow russia to hack them remotely though
I didn’t know Russia had managed to hack any country’s military devices. You would think they’d stop those pesky drones from blowing up all their tanks and soldiers if that were the case.
Cool so I can just hack them and disable them. IoT is great huh.
Wow, I didn’t know you were so good at hacking military devices! Why not sell your skills!? I’m sure some country would pay to be able to hack fighter jets and aircraft carrier!
I just hacked your phone, sorry about that. Also your clothes washer.
Landmines? Smart, those never hurt anybody accidentally /s
Civilians end up paying the price for land mines
The headline of the article is misleading. No one is laying “pre-emptive” minefields at their borders for civilians to waltz in, withdrawal from the Ottawa agreement means that anti-personnel landmines are an option if Russia starts massing troops on their side of the border.
I’ve trained with landmines during my military service and they are truly horrible things. I hope we never have to use them again.
This is shocking. We are still removing mines left from ages past …
When someone shambles to a hospital missing a limb, they can blame it on Russia who laid those landmines, I guess.
Its always projection with these people.
Finland in 10 years: Let’s attack russia. Sieg hBOOM
First as tragedy, then as farce.
NATO sure like building useless walls eh
“client state of Belarus” … In the last 4 yrs, I actually see a bit more of independence of Belarus from Moscow than Germany, Lithuania or Finland does from Washington DC… Belorussian at least takes weeks or months to comply with Moscow’s demands… it is always overnight for Europeans!
Militarily speaking, I don’t see this being much of a deterrent either. In such a vast terrain, it would not be hard for Russia to get hold of one and reverse engineer it to disable it (presumably they will be remote controlled and disabled). But even with that, just a large unmanned machine can go in front triggering the mines and breach the line overnight. Again, due to the vast amount of land border and civilian population, it will be a very thin line. Of course, that takes the assumption that Russia had any interest of invading any land beyond Ukraine, that I would rate it as zero (unless invaded first or an total embargo on Kaliningrad!). After NATO’s progress fiasco showed in Ukraine, I think from now, the industry and certain politicians just view NATO as a cash cow for the remaining of its existence and less and less expenses share of the pie will be for innovation and readiness.
And Belarus took decades to finally stop sitting on the fence and come for help to Russia in the first place. And this of course happened after months of coup attempts in 2020. Poland and Lithuania still do everything they can to harm Belarus short of military attack.
Its a boom belt
Even if it was true that Russia was going to invade them, which is not, what are landmines going to do to a modern army lmao.
@bennieandthez @davel LOL
A pragmatic low cost solution in light of the usa threat of forcing the european members of nato to “pay their fair share”. But what prevents russia from detonating them with drones? This isn’t ds9. They (presumably) aren’t self replicating.
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The “Russian Human Wave” narrative is based on Nazi propaganda from World War II, trying to draw a racist connection between the asiatic Russians and the Mongols, the idea of the “Mongol Horde.” Neither the Red Army during World War II nor the modern Russian Federation use human wave tactics, the closest was the Tsarist army pre-Socialism. This is ridiculous.
As for the DPRK, seems their involvement was limited to Kursk, and munitions supplies.
“Mongol Horde.”
Funniest part is even the original narration was complete bullshit. Mongols regularily won battles against more numerous armies due to superior logistics, strategy, tactics and equipment.
Exactly! It was just racism the whole way down.
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It was relevent then, and is relevant now because opposition to Russia is filled with Russophobia. The Russian Federation doesn’t use “Human Wave” tactics, and haven’t used them. There’s no evidence of it, only allegations, and those allegations draw from their historical accusations against the Red Army, equally false.
Denouncing anti-slavic racism isn’t “Russian apologia.” I oppose NATO expansionism and I agree with the rights of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics to secede from Ukraine, which they have done due to the coup in 2014. I also support a swift conclusion to the war. If you oppose those, I doubt we will see eye to eye.
It is telling that you refuse to “counter my nonsense,” that speaks more to a lack of ability to do so.
So I guess the circle will go round and round again, presumably until we learn how to communicate with people different than us.
I think it has more to do with the people we trust as our representatives.
I’d say its more about the people who choose to lead, but same same.
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This is absurd nonsense even from the military point of view, it’s Stupid Man’s Maginot Line and in case of real attack will be broken effortlessly. It’s pure political posturing, only people that suffer from it will be random civilians.
it’s Stupid Man’s Maginot Line and in case of real attack will be broken effortlessly
The Maginot Line was not broken, it was avoided. The nazis were essentially forced to take a different route to reach France, through Belgium. The issue was that it gave the defenders a false sense of security and the alternate route was not well protected (they thought the rough terrain would be a deterrent). It was an error in strategy, but the line itself held.
Better to wait until hostilities start and seed the enemy territory on the other side of your border with mines to cut off their initial force from getting backup than to endanger your own side with explosives that may fail to deactivate when decommissioned.
Also if they can be deactivated remotely, what stops your enemy from figuring out the kill code.
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Russia who still fights with meat wave attacks
Here we go again with the literal Nazi propaganda of the “human meat wave Asiatic hordes”.
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What part of the modern drone footage sounds like meat wave to you, Nazi apologist?
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You can argue that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is immoral without resorting to Nazi propaganda, but you refuse to do so because you’d rather dehumanise Russians.
That wasn’t only mines, mines was just a first line and on way smaller lenght of the front.
Do we know if the idea is to really have only mines?
The article gives as example some razor wire reinforced fence area through the forest that’s likely gonna be targeted (the picture does not show what’s on the floor, but you can see the area has surveillance cameras too). I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea is to have some multi-layered protection, Surovikin-like, but of course the mines is what will break the news, since they could affect civilians the most.
I would say even the mines would be too expensive (especially at the time entire NATO have problem with ammo production), everything is probably just one of the warmongering masturbation ideas that Baltics produce in higher amount than any weapon. Even if realised it would be at most something like Poland did at Belarussian border, so it would be basically a fence to stop and kill unarmed migrants and it would also tie entire armies of those countries to watch it.
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