As a Croatian, I'm really glad to hear these type of news. However, also as a Croatian, I don't quite buy the news. I'm sure great progress was made but it's never going to reach 100%; It's just the nature of these damn things in combination with our geography and where the frontlines were.
It means there are no known areas that are still littered with landmines, but yes, that's not a guarantee there aren't any.
Not Croatian but Bosnian, 2030 is our target for this milestone and we have to keep de-mining ~70 square kilometres every year to be able to hit that milestone.
True that. I used to work in the Netherlands, and sometimes it seemed like every other week the rail network was disrupted by a newly-discovered unexploded bomb, left over from the plastering the Allied air forces gave the Dutch railways.
Indeed. With landmines from 90's at least general areas are known, there's signage and if you're not being stupid by venturing way past signage it's all really safe to be around.
As German, I can say, as long as not someone used mines out of glass, they will rot away in some decades. We still have some woods where you could step on glass mines....
But happy to hear the news. Some years ago as I was urban exploring the airfield in Zeljava it has hit someone nearby the field. Happily I just saw the ambulance and the police.
10 years is a long time, but 10 years after a war is not a long time. Damages to building still remains, mines and plenty of unexploded ordinances will remain, and psychological scars are still very strong.
Something I have really wondered is, why aren't there stronger incentives to build mines with a mechanism that disables them after a certain time has passed? There must be tactical and strategical reasons which are regarded more important, but surely the party using them for defending their own land ought to have an interest in not having to deal with this threat for decades after the war has ended, and an aggressor who wishes to take over an area should have the same incentives.
Or are the reasons technical, that it is simply too difficult to develop a reliable mechanism for disabling them?
“The Department will continue its commitment not to employ persistent landmines.
For the purposes of this policy, ‘persistent landmines’ means landmines that do not
incorporate self-destruction mechanisms and self-deactivation features. The Department will only employ, develop, produce, or otherwise acquire landmines that are non-persistent, meaning they must possess self destruction mechanisms and self-
deactivation features.”
“ For example, all activated landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in 30 days or less after emplacement and will possess a back-up self-deactivation feature. Some landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in shorter periods of time, such as two hours or forty-eight hours.”
This distinguishes “self-destruct” where the mine blows itself up and “self-deactivation” where the mine disarms itself. The first is safer because it doesn’t leave explosive material behind, which could chemicaly detoriate and become unstable decades later. The second is used as a failsafe in case the self-destruct fails.
> Or are the reasons technical
They certainly were when the really old mines were made. Some of them are nothing more than just spring loaded pressure plates. But today modern landmines are much more sophisticated. Some of them can distinguish the seismic signature or a truck from a tank. There are also radio controlled mine fields where soldiers can remotely activate / deactivate the whole mine field as the threat evolves.
Cost/manufacturing complexity. If you are country struggling to defend your self you don't think problems in 30 years if today problem is does the country exists or not. Might be difficult to put your self to a small defending countries shoes which is absolute running our of resources.
The costs of the self-destructs and failsafes exceed the cost of the rest of the landmine. One of the reason mines are used is that they are exceedingly cheap and simple to build at scale. No batteries or electronics. Even a relatively primitive industrial base can produce them.
In practice, only wealthy countries are willing to pay for mines with reliable self-destruct and target discrimination technology.
As someone else pointed out, the short story is cost. Mines are cheap, make them more advanced and they are not cheap.
That said, even if the trigger is disabled, it's still an explosive device and should still be cleared (or never placed in the first place, as the Ottawa treaty says which the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan are not a part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty)
I'm guessing it's the latter, because you have to keep the mine-disabling mechanisms working and powered up through possible adverse weather and environmental conditions for long enough that the conflict has a fair chance of having ended.
I did some off road travelling in Croatia about 15 years ago, thanks GPS driving us into some farming roads.
Only when I got out of it, I realised how stupid idea that was to keep following the GPS, on some country side villages the markings of the war were still visible, with abandoned buildings full of bullet holes.
Naturally having mines still around was a possibility that I completly forgot about.
Think of it this way: bullet holes are where the fighting took place, while front lines have fluctuated. You don't want to mine an area that your soldiers might want to advance through. Land mines are placed when front lines have stabilised (like they are right now in Ukraine) to prevent the other side from advancing through. You only do that once your side has no intention of advancing further.
As such, land mines were usually properly documented and clearly marked as such after the war with giant skulls and red tapes, usually with some combo of words "PAZI MINE" ("beware, mines"). So while there are still rural areas that are littered with bullet holes, that does not mean those same areas were full of mines. It's also highly unlikely for a mine to be on any road, especially if it looks fairly well-maintained. You can take a road going through the minefield just fine, but you should never be one of those urban explorers that intentionally strays off of the road to look at the ruins on the side of that road.
What you can do is look at the casualty rate per year and see how it went from hundreds in the 90s post-war period, to dozens throughout 2000s, to 0-1 in recent years and calculate your likelihood. Here's that chart for Bosnia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Bosnia_and_Herze...
I lived along former front lines my entire life, I spotted some unexploded ones with my own eyes a long time ago, I'm not dead yet. That said, I am more equipped to handle such situations than you are, as I was taught how to do that since my first days in school. I firmly believe that outsiders are frequently overreacting these days, which is completely understandable, but that doesn't mean it is rational. Your odds of winning a lottery are infinitely higher than dying to a landmine in the few days you spend here. You can increase them by doing something stupid like avoiding those markings, but besides that you'll be fine.
Just this week I talked to a person doing tree pruning/forestry, they were negotiating a job in a rural area in Croatia (wider Karlovac area).
The particular patch of land is still suspected to contain mines, although "in theory" they were all cleared out.
The client didn't want to pay for the minesweeeping tech team to ensure safety, the workers didn't want to wade into a forest that might still be mined.
I suspect this is not an isolated case. It's far from over.
On the other hand nobody except the timber industry is cutting down a random tree in the middle of the woods. If you're trimming trees on a power line cut or at the edge of a clearing you're working somewhere that has already been gone over with men and machine to make that cut or clearing. So it might be one of those "basically no chance but due to rules... blah blah licensed professionals... blah blah insurance.... blah blah" where even though everyone knows it's fine the guy who has to do the work can't just go do the work without paying someone else to take the liability, etc, etc.
But then again, it's Croatia. They're not rich enough to afford that kind of dysfunction.
Yeah this was a few trees at the edge of the forest leaning over some houses, needed clearing. "Should be fine", but they're not keen on taking the (personal, physical) risk.
Thing is, you can't narrow it down to some acceptable level of risk. Mines are by definition stealthy, the only way to reduce the risk is to eliminate it by combing over everything, which is extremely hard, tedious, expensive, etc.
Placing landmines is probably among the shittiest and most vile things someone can do.
Knowing that ten, twenty, maybe 50 years after a conflict ends a completely innocent and unrelated person, maybe even not born at the time you did it, might die or get permanently disabled is a sick move.
Place where I grew up is still full of landmines (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and some of the people who placed those mines are government officials today, loved by EU because of their natural resources.
My gut feeling says that landmines can be more acceptable when placed in designated areas, for example a strip along the border with proper fencing. And maybe electronics to disable them when they are no longer necessary so they can be safely removed. This is a fundamentally different type of weapon than something that is hidden and anyone can inadvertently step/drive into.
Placing mines on your own border for defense purposes is one thing. Doing an aggression in an independent country, placing mines there is completely different.
And if it is correctly mapped and the map is well managed, then it is not quite as catastrophic as warlords simply burying mines somewhere indiscriminately.
Also I think that if you live next to a warmongering country you certainly care more about making a military invasion the shittiest and the most vile thing for the aggressor that you can think of and landmines are cheap and effective there.
I think it's a sufficient trade off that landmines self-disable themselves in, say, 5 years or so. If the war continues you'll keep planting more and when it ends you'll just wait a few years and go collect them.
You don't just collect landmines though. The Germans in WW2 had maps which they handed over to the allies but it still killed hundreds of people clearing the landmines. Eventually they decided to use German POWs.
It is absolutely evil. Placing mines instantly puts you in the bad guy category as far as I'm concerned, no matter whom you claim you're "targetting". The Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty was an absolute disgrace. Indefensible.
> The Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty was an absolute disgrace. Indefensible.
It is entirely defensible on account of wanting to reduce risk of being invaded by Russia.
PS: Poland also exited the treaty. I entirely support use of mines on territory of mu country for purposes such as reducing risk of Russian invading Poland again. Though deployment should not be premature.
But I hope that production and stockpiling of enough mines is ongoing.
If you think that is indefensible - are you aware of how WW II went for Baltics, Poland, Belarus? In Poland about 16% of population was murdered, in Belarus about 20% of population was murdered. And Poland and Baltics got decades of occupation on top of that. Belarus still has not managed to get from Russia's boot as of 2026.
In conflict between equals, landmines are the only practical way to restrict the mobility of the enemy. That's why 20% of Ukraine is contaminated by mines. If you were official and your choices would be losing and more people dying or placing more landmines that can be cleared over 20 years, what would you do?
I had the good fortune of going to Croatia (as an American) for work about 10 years ago, and I milked that trip hard. What a beautiful country. Dubrovnik, Split, Hvar Island, it was pretty magical.
Poland withdrew from the Ottawa Convention last month, with the aim of being able to lay anti-personnel mines along its eastern border.
Whether it does or not is an open-question, and while I understand it of course, the idea we're increasing the use of mines is a sad day. They're so indiscriminate and will no doubt cause injuries far into the future.
There's no border wall, just a typical bike road next to a small fence. So no, unless Poland is planning to blow up their own civilians, they won't mine their own country lol.
My wife’s part of the Family has a house with view of the border to Belarusia. It used to be a small fence just in front of a wood, but that’s long past. It’s truly a wall now.
Placing landmines systematically during peacetime by a stable government-ran military should at least make clearing mines easier, and minefields better marked for locals. So, it's not completely indiscriminate. If it decreases war-related life loss (both direct and indirect), it's net positive
I live near part of the WW1 trenches. Most mines, bombs, etc. have been removed for decades now. Still, there are patches where the ground is so polluted with e.g. lead that nothing would grow. We tend to use that ground for companies and industrial things, but no worries, its completely safe for your health, citizen.
France still has WWI unexploded ordnance, and keep-out areas are still being de-mined.
This has been going on for a century now.
About 900 tons of explosives are removed each year. Completion in 700 years at the current rate.[1]
There are an estimated one to two million mines in the Korean DMZ. Emplaced by both the South and North Koreans since the 1950s. There is no possibility all those mines are mapped properly. And most of them are not the self-disabling/destroying kind. It will take generations to clear.
Does Australia have any landmines? I was under the impression that we had some areas with sea mines which had been swept but still weren't guaranteed safe, and that was it.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Can drones sniff explosives? I think that would be very expensive, they can have metal detectors, and mark suspicious sites for someone (or something, like a different digging drone) else to check.
But rats can sniff explosives and do so succesfully.
I don't know how it works for rats, but I assume it is like with dogs. If you have already a trained dog, you make the same exercises with the trained and the untrained dog, so the untrained dog can just watch what the trained dog does and imitate it.
Not Croatian but Bosnian, 2030 is our target for this milestone and we have to keep de-mining ~70 square kilometres every year to be able to hit that milestone.
But happy to hear the news. Some years ago as I was urban exploring the airfield in Zeljava it has hit someone nearby the field. Happily I just saw the ambulance and the police.
The fire traversed the hillside, and every hour or two a landmine would explode.
This was ten years after the war.
Or are the reasons technical, that it is simply too difficult to develop a reliable mechanism for disabling them?
For example consider this Department of Defence policy from 2020: https://media.defense.gov/2020/Jan/31/2002242359/-1/-1/1/DOD...
“The Department will continue its commitment not to employ persistent landmines. For the purposes of this policy, ‘persistent landmines’ means landmines that do not incorporate self-destruction mechanisms and self-deactivation features. The Department will only employ, develop, produce, or otherwise acquire landmines that are non-persistent, meaning they must possess self destruction mechanisms and self- deactivation features.”
“ For example, all activated landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in 30 days or less after emplacement and will possess a back-up self-deactivation feature. Some landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in shorter periods of time, such as two hours or forty-eight hours.”
This distinguishes “self-destruct” where the mine blows itself up and “self-deactivation” where the mine disarms itself. The first is safer because it doesn’t leave explosive material behind, which could chemicaly detoriate and become unstable decades later. The second is used as a failsafe in case the self-destruct fails.
> Or are the reasons technical
They certainly were when the really old mines were made. Some of them are nothing more than just spring loaded pressure plates. But today modern landmines are much more sophisticated. Some of them can distinguish the seismic signature or a truck from a tank. There are also radio controlled mine fields where soldiers can remotely activate / deactivate the whole mine field as the threat evolves.
Note that the bar is pretty high for reliable here. Say 1 in a thousand isn't disarmed or destroyed.
Would you encourage your child to play in an area where ten thousand mines were dropped? A thousand? Five hundred?
In practice, only wealthy countries are willing to pay for mines with reliable self-destruct and target discrimination technology.
That said, even if the trigger is disabled, it's still an explosive device and should still be cleared (or never placed in the first place, as the Ottawa treaty says which the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan are not a part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty)
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland exited.
Ukraine has not officially withdrawn from the treaty, but ignored it. Last year they officially announced withdrawal.
Unfortunately anti-personnel mines are highly useful in case of war, especially for defender.
The problem is of the enemy know you use only mines that work for max n hours or m days they just wait for n + 1 hours or m + 1 days.
There is a lot more to say about this, but there are probably people way more qualified than be here to explain it.
Only when I got out of it, I realised how stupid idea that was to keep following the GPS, on some country side villages the markings of the war were still visible, with abandoned buildings full of bullet holes.
Naturally having mines still around was a possibility that I completly forgot about.
Think of it this way: bullet holes are where the fighting took place, while front lines have fluctuated. You don't want to mine an area that your soldiers might want to advance through. Land mines are placed when front lines have stabilised (like they are right now in Ukraine) to prevent the other side from advancing through. You only do that once your side has no intention of advancing further.
As such, land mines were usually properly documented and clearly marked as such after the war with giant skulls and red tapes, usually with some combo of words "PAZI MINE" ("beware, mines"). So while there are still rural areas that are littered with bullet holes, that does not mean those same areas were full of mines. It's also highly unlikely for a mine to be on any road, especially if it looks fairly well-maintained. You can take a road going through the minefield just fine, but you should never be one of those urban explorers that intentionally strays off of the road to look at the ruins on the side of that road.
I lived along former front lines my entire life, I spotted some unexploded ones with my own eyes a long time ago, I'm not dead yet. That said, I am more equipped to handle such situations than you are, as I was taught how to do that since my first days in school. I firmly believe that outsiders are frequently overreacting these days, which is completely understandable, but that doesn't mean it is rational. Your odds of winning a lottery are infinitely higher than dying to a landmine in the few days you spend here. You can increase them by doing something stupid like avoiding those markings, but besides that you'll be fine.
The particular patch of land is still suspected to contain mines, although "in theory" they were all cleared out.
The client didn't want to pay for the minesweeeping tech team to ensure safety, the workers didn't want to wade into a forest that might still be mined.
I suspect this is not an isolated case. It's far from over.
On one hand it might be a real risk.
On the other hand nobody except the timber industry is cutting down a random tree in the middle of the woods. If you're trimming trees on a power line cut or at the edge of a clearing you're working somewhere that has already been gone over with men and machine to make that cut or clearing. So it might be one of those "basically no chance but due to rules... blah blah licensed professionals... blah blah insurance.... blah blah" where even though everyone knows it's fine the guy who has to do the work can't just go do the work without paying someone else to take the liability, etc, etc.
But then again, it's Croatia. They're not rich enough to afford that kind of dysfunction.
Turtles all the way down.
Thing is, you can't narrow it down to some acceptable level of risk. Mines are by definition stealthy, the only way to reduce the risk is to eliminate it by combing over everything, which is extremely hard, tedious, expensive, etc.
Knowing that ten, twenty, maybe 50 years after a conflict ends a completely innocent and unrelated person, maybe even not born at the time you did it, might die or get permanently disabled is a sick move.
Place where I grew up is still full of landmines (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and some of the people who placed those mines are government officials today, loved by EU because of their natural resources.
For example, Finland has a program that will mine the entire border with Russia in just hours if Russia invades.
Also I think that if you live next to a warmongering country you certainly care more about making a military invasion the shittiest and the most vile thing for the aggressor that you can think of and landmines are cheap and effective there.
I think it's a sufficient trade off that landmines self-disable themselves in, say, 5 years or so. If the war continues you'll keep planting more and when it ends you'll just wait a few years and go collect them.
It is entirely defensible on account of wanting to reduce risk of being invaded by Russia.
PS: Poland also exited the treaty. I entirely support use of mines on territory of mu country for purposes such as reducing risk of Russian invading Poland again. Though deployment should not be premature.
But I hope that production and stockpiling of enough mines is ongoing.
If you think that is indefensible - are you aware of how WW II went for Baltics, Poland, Belarus? In Poland about 16% of population was murdered, in Belarus about 20% of population was murdered. And Poland and Baltics got decades of occupation on top of that. Belarus still has not managed to get from Russia's boot as of 2026.
They make me immediately go “oh I get it”
Actually at the rate we're going, there will still be active minefield defenses for most of our lifespans.
Whether it does or not is an open-question, and while I understand it of course, the idea we're increasing the use of mines is a sad day. They're so indiscriminate and will no doubt cause injuries far into the future.
The self-clearing is interesting and I hindsight auch an obvious thing to implement.
https://www.osw.waw.pl/pl/publikacje/komentarze-osw/2023-11-... mentions optimistic estimate of 70 years, and other statistics give estimated cleanup time of 740 years.
And in months since then more mines were placed.
Hell, Australia still has WW2 mines.
[1] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-red-zone-la...
Cause the latter is pretty common in Europe too, but I'm surprised you have actually minefields which haven't been cleared up in Australia.
> all known minefields have been cleared
When clearing minefields, one does not miss mines, because that would be lethal! Every cube inch is carefully mapped. It is extremely hard work.
It's a group that provides prosthetics to people who have lost body parts due to landmines left over from the Vietnam War.
Even decades later, there are areas in Laos that have so many unexploded bomblets, it's dangerous to do stuff there, or even build.
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.
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.
But rats can sniff explosives and do so succesfully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magawa
How does that work for a rat? Sounds interesting.
Then the ground ones do the actual demining.
There has been lots of rain falling from the sky, moving earth, since the mines were laid.