MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it has evidence that Ukraine has repeatedly used anti-personnel mines which have injured civilians and so Kyiv’s exit from the Ottawa Convention would have no impact on the battlefield.
Ukraine last month announced its withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention which banning the production and use of anti-personnel mines. It said it was a necessary step in view of Russian tactics in their 40-month-old war.
Russia is not a party to the treaty and Ukraine says Russia has used landmines extensively in the war.
“The use of anti-personnel mines by the Kyiv regime against civilians is regularly recorded by our law enforcement agencies,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“Ukraine’s decision to withdraw from the mechanism… fits into the general course of the collective West and its satellites to revise and undermine the international legal system in the field of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation.”
Zakharova noted that under the text of the Ottawa Treaty withdrawal during an armed conflict from the convention should not take effect before the end of the armed conflict.
“The decision to withdraw from the convention comes into force only after the end of the said armed conflict,” Zakharova said. “We proceed from the fact that this provision is fully applicable to the withdrawal process launched by Ukraine from this mechanism.”
“At the same time, the obligations of the Convention were not fulfilled by Kyiv even before the aforementioned decision,” she said, adding that Ukraine had been obliged to destroy all stocks of anti-personnel mines back in 2010 but had not.
Lithuania and Finland look set to start domestic production of anti-personnel landmines next year to supply themselves and Ukraine because of what they see as the military threat from Russia, officials from the two NATO member states told Reuters.
The two countries, which border Russia, have announced their intention to pull out of the Ottawa Convention banning the use of such mines, and the officials said production could be launched once the six-month withdrawal process is completed.
Russia dismisses claims that it will attack a NATO member as Russophobic “nonsense” spread by European powers in an attempt to convince their populations to accept soaring defence spending.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov, editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
