Finland’s lawmakers vote to leave land mine treaty as Nordic country boosts defences against Russia

A notice warning about land mines is attached to a tree as a Ukrainian specialized team searches for mines in a field in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, June 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

HELSINKI — Finland’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to pull out of a major international treaty on antipersonnel land mines Thursday as the Nordic country seeks to boost its defences against an increasingly assertive Russia next door.

Finland shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) land border with Russia and joined NATO in 2023. Finland says land mines could be used to defend its vast and rugged terrain in the event of an attack. Finnish lawmakers voted 157-18 to move forward on a government proposal to leave the Ottawa Convention.

The Nordics and Baltics have been sounding the alarm on a potential Russian incursion since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Analysts say Ukraine is among the countries that are the 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 have not 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, 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 anti-personnel mines a symbol of inhumanity is starting to fracture,” Spoljaric 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.”