Poland, together with the Baltic countries, withdrew from the Ottawa Convention, the parties to which are prohibited from using anti-personnel mines as a type of weapon. However, in this case, the adoption of an appropriate political decision is only the first step, because then Poland needs to physically accumulate an appropriate stockpile of mines.
The fact is that official Warsaw became a party to the Ottawa Convention in 2012, after the war of the Russian Federation against Georgia and the Kremlin’s withdrawal from the Treaty on the Limitation of Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), and since then the relevant industrial capacities have been lost.
As the Polish Defence24 portal, the very fact of Poland’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention does not mean a rejection of the norms of humanitarian law in the use of anti-personnel mines. However, for the sake of fairness, it should be noted that before the entry into force of this convention, all NATO countries used anti-personnel mines for pressure action.
Therefore, as the authors of this publication further reflect, Poland should accumulate both “simple” anti-personnel mines of pressure action and “smart” mines, equipped, in particular, with a self-destructor.
Moreover, given Russia’s active use of infantry in the war against Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s plans to increase the number of armed forces to at least 1.5 million troops, anti-personnel mines as a type of weapon are becoming especially relevant.
However, if we talk about the practical part, then not much is said here – that “the Polish industry is already working on anti-personnel mines that would comply with the norms of humanitarian law”, that “such work should be implemented as soon as possible”, and that, if possible, appropriate cluster shells for rocket and barrel artillery for anti-personnel submunitions should be requested from the United States and South Korea as the main partners of the United States in rearmament.
Separately, I was surprised by the reference of the authors of Defence24 that in Soviet times, a significant number and nomenclature of anti-personnel mines were produced in Ukraine, so they say that in the event of a “ceasefire” (or similar forms of “political settlement”), Poland should ask for anti-personnel mines from our country.
Earlier, News Hub also wrote about the Baobab-K remote mining system, the lack of which was acutely felt for the Polish army in the summer of 2023.