Grant Wyeth
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, border crossings between Finland and Russia numbered close to 1 million per month. Russians would cross seeking products not available at home, while Finns would fill up on cheap petrol. Yet as pandemic restrictions eased, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Finns placed new restrictions on crossings. In May 2022, Finland applied to join NATO. Then, in November 2023, Finland closed the border completely following Russia’s hybrid tactics of pushing asylum seekers into Finland to create political problems for the government.
In July this year Finland signalled that its trust in Moscow had eroded completely. Following decisions by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, Finland also informed the United Nations that it will withdraw from the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. A move designed to potentially turn the Finnish-Russian border into something far more inhospitable.
Since becoming effective in the late-1990s, the Ottawa Convention had been a great success as an arms control treaty. Global landmine and explosive-remnant casualties fell from about 25,000 annually in the mid-1990s to fewer than 1000 in 2012. However, there has been a recent uptick of several thousand more due to extensive landmine use by Russia in eastern Ukraine and by the junta in Myanmar. The nature of the weapons means that the vast majority of victims remain civilians – 84% in 2023, with more than a third being children – making the decision to withdraw all the more fraught.
Withdrawal from the convention requires a six month notice period, however, as the treaty was designed to prevent the use of landmines within warzones, it contains a condition that withdrawal cannot take place before the end of any on-going conflict a state is party to. Ukraine has also decided to withdraw from the convention, but given its extraordinary circumstances fighting a state who is not a signatory, it has chosen to be in violation of this provision.
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