By Olha Hembik | 2026-03-24

In 2016, Poland completed the destruction of its entire antipersonnel mine stockpile -- more than a million weapons, gone ahead of the treaty deadline. A decade later, it is planning to produce millions more.

That shift became official on February 20, when Poland withdrew from the 1997 Ottawa Convention. Warsaw framed the decision as a response to a fundamentally changed security environment -- one where Russia's war in Ukraine has demonstrated that mined barriers, combined with artillery and intelligence, are among the most effective tools of territorial defense. Poland gave its allies six months' advance notice before the withdrawal took effect.

Last year, the three Baltic states completed their own withdrawals. Finland left in January, and Ukraine followed. Russia never joined the treaty. Of NATO members bordering Russia or Belarus, Norway is now the only one that says it wants to stay in.

A strategic signal

Lawyer Petro Kraevskiy called the withdrawal "one of the most important steps for Polish security since it joined NATO," telling Kontur that an adversary would see mines in Poland's arsenal as a deterrent.

"This is a strategic signal. Poland is no longer basing its security solely on normative international commitments and is making deterrence a stronger component of its defense doctrine," he said. "This is a response to a radical shift in the realities of security in our part of Europe, into a full-scale war beyond the bounds of the eastern border."

Paweł Zalewski, Poland's deputy defense minister, told the Associated Press the mines are "one of the most important elements of the defense structure we are constructing on the eastern flank of NATO."

He said Poland would deploy them only "when there is a realistic threat of Russian aggression" and that, because the eastern border is long, "a lot" of mines will be needed.

Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk added that the withdrawal does not mean minefields will immediately appear along the border.

"This doesn't mean that anti-personnel mines will suddenly appear. It means greater freedom in using, producing, and storing them," he said.

48 hours to deploy

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said February 19 that Polish forces would need only 48 hours to reinforce the eastern border with mines under the East Shield program, a deterrence and defense system targeting the borders with Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad Region.

The government also announced it had completed development of Bluszcz, a modern mine-distribution system in which unmanned Polish-made vehicles, not service members, lay the mines.

State-owned manufacturer Belma is set to produce them. The company's CEO, Jarosław Zakrzewski, told Reuters that Poland will need around 5 to 6 million mines of all types, and that Belma can produce up to 1.2 million this year.

The Polish Armament Agency said it plans to field four main types of antipersonnel mines, including blast mines and fragmentation mines with a 360-degree blast radius. Zalewski has said that any production exceeding Poland's own needs could go to allies.

"Our starting point is our own needs," he told Reuters. "But for us, Ukraine is absolutely a priority because the European and Polish security line is on the Russia-Ukraine front."

'Decades later'

Not everyone welcomes the shift. Journalist and Ukrainian serviceman Serhii Kraivanovich told Kontur the mines were among the most troubling products the defense industry produces.

"This is perhaps one of the most repugnant developments of the defense industry. These mines can kill people even decades later. They can lie in the ground for 50 years waiting for a victim," he said, adding that soil erosion, rain and floods can shift mines several meters underground over time.

Oleh Semerei, an engineer at Humanitarian Security in Kharkiv, a company that clears mines from farmland in the Kharkiv region, said the toll on agriculture is severe.

"We're seeing that with every passing day of the war, it gets harder and harder to restore farmland," he told Kontur. "It will take years to completely demine individual sections of land."

Kraevskiy acknowledged the tension but said security "requires tools and a willingness to make tough decisions when there is a threat."