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.
“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.
Landmines? Smart, those never hurt anybody accidentally /s
Its always projection with these people.
When someone shambles to a hospital missing a limb, they can blame it on Russia who laid those landmines, I guess.
Its a boom belt
A nightmare for the grandchildren who will lose limbs and lives over this primitive, abhorrent practice.
Blame Putin
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.
You can’t suggest that the Russian military is capable of using modern troop mobilization strategies. Or that mass media to the contrary might be a part of a racialized propaganda campaign to dehumanize conscripts in the opposition. Or that the Russians (who are curiously still closely aligned with the Saudis, the Israelis, the Indians, and a patchwork of far-right factions across Europe and Africa) aren’t a distinct uniquely horrible imperialist faction that good liberal Europeans need to use all military options to obliterate at any cost.
Only a Russian bot or a paid shill or a Tankie idiot would make such a claim. Why, when I read a post like this, I question whether it could even be produced by a human at all. It must be the viewpoint from the deepest bowls of the Nine Hells.
there is no evidence that the RF is seeking to expand westward
It’s weird to see NATO expand eastward for forty years, slowly gobbling up ex-Soviet states and replacing them with right-wing oligarchies and reactionary-lead business cartels. And then hearing how Russia is the expansionary power.
Weirder still to see the US bomb its way into Iraq, Afghanistan, and the length of North Africa, only to be told that armed opposition groups and disaffected insurgents are the product of Russian disinformation and imperialism.
If the US were to re-invade Vietnam, I genuinely do not know if folks on this sub would understand that the Vietcong and the Northern Vietnamese military were fighting for their independence and not some cat’s-paw of Evil Internationalist Socialism seeking to rapaciously colonize the native peoples of the French Catholic South.
I guess my Russians gore folder is western propoganda too. Thanks for clearing it up!
TZD
This ones not gore, and looks like would make my point. Russian wave vs Ukraine drones
Russians moving in a single-file line doesn’t mean “human wave tactics” are at play. Further, maintaining a “gore folder” is highly disgusting behavior, holy shit.
Why would they move in such mass on active battlefield tho? How would you call such tactics? How do you imagine human wave tactics? Is it in the style where Russians are just driven over by an APC?
Troop movements. “Human wave” tactics fell oit of fashion under the Tsar, because they are utterly ineffective, yet the slavic Russians continually get slandered as such due to the persistance of Nazi propaganda against the Red Army among western countries, who dug that back up during the cold war uncritically against the Soviets, until it’s now associated with Russians like it’s a genetic factor.
Small context addition for the tsarist human waves, all other armies used it too in that times, just read what massacres Douglas Haig or earlier Frederic the Great ordered.
Wtf? It wasn’t even gore? Just proof of huge russian column being attacked by drones
Sure, Ukraine uses drones, as does Russia, and Russia indeed has troops. This is not the same as “human waves,” the post-war Nazi cope for why the Nazis lost Stalingrad despite the Red Army using advanced (at the time) tactics to draw comparison to the “mongol hordes” due to the asiatic Russian ethnicity. This “human waves” myth perpetuates to this day because western powers repeated it enough times to pretend it’s true, and somehow persists to this day despite the laws of the battlefield changing radically since the 1800s when such tactics did exist in some degree.
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”
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.
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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.
This is shocking. We are still removing mines left from ages past …
NATO sure like building useless walls eh
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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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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.
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.
