The Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines is an international treaty concluded in 1997 that prohibits the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel mines. It has so far been signed by more than 160 states and territories, including Ukraine and Austria. Russia and the United States are not among the signatory states.

Now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a decree for Ukraine to withdraw from the landmine treaty, and he is not alone: the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—have also announced their withdrawal from the agreement, and Poland and Finland are on the verge of doing the same. All of them share borders with Russia or the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and, in light of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, feel directly threatened by Moscow.

In my opinion, this is entirely understandable: refraining from using such mines is all well and good if everyone else, including potential enemies, does the same. In view of a real or potential adversary in war who does not abide by such polite agreements, who has already used such mines in the current war and is not afraid to repeatedly threaten the use of nuclear weapons, it would be irresponsible of the governments of neighboring states to impose such restrictions on themselves at the expense of their own populations.

It is perhaps understandable that human rights groups, most of which are not based in Ukraine or Russia’s western neighbors, criticize these countries’ announcements to withdraw from the treaty, and that UN Secretary-General António Guterres has also expressed concern. But as long as these groups and the UN cannot offer a practical solution to the “Russian problem,” their statements are nothing but utopian chatter which we can absolutely do without.