Two years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, countries such as the Baltic states and Finland are warning that a threat to their territories may be on the horizon, with some intelligence agencies saying the Kremlin could make such an attempt within a decade. Now they are learning lessons from their enemy's strong defensive lines in Ukraine, noting that Russia's system of minefields, barbed wire and trenches made it impossible for Kiev's forces to advance last summer.
European countries still clamor for F-35 fighter jets and space-age weapons, but renewed interest and investment in ancient tactics The latest example of how Russia's war in Ukraine has upended long-standing assumptions about how NATO territory is defended, with a renewed focus on stopping tanks and mobile artillery. Although policymakers say they remain confident that NATO will come to their defense, they add that Trump's rhetoric makes it more important than ever that they are able to hold out as long as possible.
The choices have never been clearer than in the debate over landmines, as militaries weigh their low-cost ability to slow tanks and buy time for NATO rescuers in the face of dangers to future generations of their citizens. Landmines come in many forms, but the cheaper and simpler anti-personnel alternative, once planted, can pose a danger decades after a conflict ends. Mines and other explosive remnants of war killed or injured at least 12 civilians every day globally in 2022, many of them children, according to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor.
Policymakers in the three Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – have held talks in recent weeks about whether to withdraw from the international convention banning anti-personnel mines. For now, each has chosen not to approve them, but all are investing in anti-tank mines and other munitions that are less dangerous to civilians. It's a stunning development in countries whose forests and fields still sometimes secrete shells and unexploded ordnance from heavy fighting during World War I and World War II.
Latvian Defense Minister Andris Produs, who commissioned his country's army to study whether it makes sense to withdraw from Iraq, said: “The goal is for all of us to strengthen our defense capabilities, and to do everything so that our borders protect our societies.” The Landmine Treaty, known as the Ottawa Convention. “We must defend our territory from the first inch.”
Sprudes and his Lithuanian and Estonian counterparts recently agreed to build what they call the Baltic Defense Line, a coordinated system of bunkers and fortifications. Until recently, much of the border between Russia and those countries was rolling fields and open pine forests, with few obstacles to crossing. Countries began building fences in 2020 to deter migrants sent by Russian authorities in an attempt to destabilize European neighbors. Now, the border is set to become much more militarized, with plans to install sensors and physical barriers to block out tanks and other vehicles — as well as investing in an arsenal of anti-tank mines and remotely detonated mines that could be deployed if Russian forces start massing on the border.
The fortification plans take lessons from the Russian defensive lines in the occupied areas Eastern Ukraine, where the army dug hundreds of miles of trenches, deployed barbed wire and anti-tank barriers, and laid unusually extensive minefields. When Ukrainian forces attempted to clear the mines, Russian drones were able to direct artillery fire at them, resulting in minimal territorial gains for the Ukrainians despite high ambitions.
“Russia has used mine force rather than manpower,” said James Cowan, a former British Army general and chief executive of the HALO Trust, a demining organisation.
Lithuania and Latvia are both roughly the size of West Virginia, and Estonia is about the same size Smaller, meaning that unlike the much larger Ukraine, there would be little territory to fall back on if Russian tanks crossed the border.
“We can expect that over the next decade, NATO will face a Soviet-style mass army that, although technologically inferior to the Allies, poses a significant threat due to its size, firepower and reserves,” the Director General of Estonian Foreign Intelligence said. The service was part of an annual intelligence assessment released this month, Kaupo Rosen wrote.
Finland, which has had a separate internal conversation about landmines, significantly expanded NATO's borders with Russia when it joined the alliance last year. Motivated by security concerns along its 832-mile-long Russian border, Finland signed the Anti-Personnel Landmine Treaty more than a decade later than most countries, and only finished destroying its stockpiles in 2015. Many policymakers have questioned this The decision is in the past. , including President-elect Alexander Stubb, although the country has no current plans to withdraw from the conference.
Some Baltic policymakers say that despite NATO's defense guarantees, Ukraine's recent experience increases the necessity of repelling a Russian invasion. In 2022, world leaders initially assumed that Kiev was lost, and it took about 10 days for attitudes — and aid — to shift to one that would help the Ukrainians reclaim territory rather than flee.
But no country plans to withdraw from the Anti-Personnel Landmine Treaty at this time. In Latvia, Sprudes said the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, including the risks to civilians and the international response that would come from such a move.
“There is a range of landmines that we can use. Latvia is fully prepared to develop this capability.” “We have landmines in our arsenal, and we will develop our capabilities without acquiring those landmines banned under the Convention.”
The treaty allows countries to use anti-tank mines, which are considered safer for civilians because they require much greater downward pressure to explode than the pressure created by a human walking over them. The treaty also allows the use of smaller, remote-controlled mines that can kill individual soldiers, as long as they can be operated by someone who can distinguish between military and civilian targets. These types of mines are much more expensive than older anti-personnel mines, which as part of traditional military doctrine are scattered around an anti-tank mine to make the larger charge more difficult to disable.
Neither the United States nor Russia is a party to the Anti-Personnel Mine Treaty, which has been signed by 133 countries, although the Biden administration has announced that it plans to adhere to its rules except in South Korea, where the agencies are using tools against the North Korean invasion.
The Biden administration has not sent banned anti-personnel mines to Ukraine, but the Pentagon said it has sent an unspecified number of Cold War-era anti-tank mines to help Kiev in its battle.
Anti-personnel mines are “difficult to manage,” said Kosti Salim, Permanent Secretary of the Estonian Defense Ministry. “Ultimately, mines will not be cleared by your opponent or enemy, but they will be cleared by our children and animals.”
Estonia plans to build 600 small fortified bunkers along its border with Russia, and Latvia and Lithuania are expected to build more because their land borders are longer. Planners said each bunker would be able to hold about 10 soldiers and withstand an artillery strike.
Salem said that with fortified borders, Russia would need “more resources, more firepower” to launch an attack. He noted that the Kremlin's need to assemble these additional forces would give NATO countries early warning of an impending attack, giving them more time to prepare.
“Our plan is to make extensive use of anti-tank mines, optical mines and all other types of mines,” Salem said. This has been our policy from very early on. We have supplied Ukraine with tens of thousands of anti-tank mines. “We are working to replenish these stocks.”
Some anti-mine activists say that even mines permitted under the treaty could pose a problem for civilians. They warn that any type of unmonitored mine could pose a safety risk.
When the treaty was being negotiated, many international anti-mine groups wanted to ban anti-tank mines, “because so many refugee buses and vehicles were getting blown up,” said Ken Rutherford, a political science professor at James Madison University who survived. Landmine explosion in Somalia in 1993.
“Just because anti-tank mines are not included in the Ottawa Treaty does not make them humanitarian or reasonable,” he said.
But some policymakers say the front-line countries should go further, withdrawing from the treaty and doing everything they can to make the Kremlin think twice before crossing the border.
“In Ukraine, we see that all those fortified lines are very effective,” said Janice Garisons, who until last month was the most senior civilian employee in Latvia's Defense Ministry. “It is a good deterrent if the Russians know that we are prepared to use whatever we have at our disposal.”
For now, leaders seem likely to focus on what they are allowed to do under their existing treaty obligations, but will continue to monitor the fighting in Ukraine for new lessons.
“The battlefield in Ukraine is an important example of how modern warfare works, which actually combines the latest technologies with cheap, old-fashioned solutions,” said Latvian Defense Minister Spruds. “We see a mixture of everything: 19th-century ambition, the brutality of 20th-century trench warfare, and 21st-century technologies. Many things that were previously taken for granted must be corrected.
