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TiredOfLife 4 hours ago

Poland and other countries that just abandoned the mine treaty border russia and belarus. You know, the country that launched and the country that allowed its land to launch largest war in europe since WW2.

klez 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes. But the what's the point of a convention about weapons that you only observe during peacetime and abandon as soon as war is at your gates?

I mean, I get it, I would be scared shitless too if I had Russia at my border. I'm not saying that Poland is bad for doing this (but I'm not saying it's good either). It's more of a general observation about this kind of treaties: (relatively) easy to get into during peacetime, hard to uphold when shit hits the fan.

rwyinuse 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

From my point of view as a Finn, the convention is indeed pointless as long as Russia doesn't obey it. No point avoiding land mines in our Eastern border in case of a war, when Russia will mine any territory they capture anyway. Besides, our mines are much more likely to be marked correctly to maps, and probably will have a function that deactivates them after certain time.

matkoniecz 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> Yes. But the what's the point of a convention about weapons that you only observe during peacetime and abandon as soon as war is at your gates?

You should ask people who supported or invented this convention. I never supported it and would support exit from it also before 2014 or 2022.

More cynical answer is that in time of peace refusing to sign up gives you bad PR so you sign up and in case of war you exit it (Finland, Poland, Baltics just did it) or ignore altogether (as Ukraine did). But it just weakens commitment to other conventions and PR hit would not be so bad, so I consider it as a mistake.

but signing up to it while Russia has not even pretended to do so was absurd.