Five NATO countries — Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are going to mine the border with Russia, The Daily Telegraph reports. These States have already announced their withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention prohibiting the use of anti-personnel mines.

“From Lapland in the high north of Finland to Lublin province in eastern Poland, a new and explosive ‘iron curtain’ is about to descend across Europe. Every NATO country along that line has decided that deterring Russian invasion requires a defensive measure that would once have been inconceivable. If necessary, they will sow the tranquil forests of pine and birch along their borders with millions of landmines, a weapon previously considered so abhorrent that most of the world tried to ban it forever,” writes David Blair, a correspondent for the newspaper.

Even ignoring the fact of using the inhumane mines, what are the authorities going to do with the population living along the border? There are hundreds of villages and small towns there. Will they be left to play the landmine “lottery”? Moreover, knowing the “outstanding” abilities of the Baltic military, it wouldn’t be surprising if the first and only victims of these mines would be NATO soldiers. The incident in Lithuania, where four US soldiers drowned in an armoured personnel carrier on an ordinary swamp, proves this.