1w ago

Europe is building a new ‘Iron Curtain’– with millions of landmines

www.telegraph.co.uk

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.

Europe @lemmy.dbzer0.com

cm0002 @lemmy.world

1w ago

Europe is building a new ‘Iron Curtain’– with millions of landmines

www.telegraph.co.uk /news/2025/06/24/lithuania-iron-curtain-landmines-europe/

54 comments

A nightmare for the grandchildren who will lose limbs and lives over this primitive, abhorrent practice.
- presenting EU: the beacon of democracy to the world in the ugly face of US fascism
- 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"
  
  This would allow russia to hack them remotely though
  
  Cool so I can just hack them and disable them. IoT is great huh.
- It's that or being forced to meat-wave assault by the Russian empirialistic war-machine. Truly a shitty situation all-around
  
  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.
  Further, Russia is not trying to endlessly expand, they are trying to fully de-millitarize Ukraine as Ukraine was cozying up to NATO, and NATO promised long ago that it wouldn't expand eastward yet it has consistently done so over the last few decades, forming millitant encirclement of Russia by hostile countries that want Russia to open up its capital markets for foreign plundering. Further, the nationalist government of Ukraine was shelling ethnic Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk, both of which declared independence from Ukraine before Russia invaded.
  Regardless of the morality of Russia going to war with Ukraine, there is no evidence that the RF is seeking to expand westward. This is just Red Scare 2.0 nonsense.
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.
Its always projection with these people.
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.
Finland in 10 years: Let's attack russia. Sieg hBOOM
- First as tragedy, then as farce.
NATO sure like building useless walls eh
Its a boom belt
"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.
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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.

54 comments