Finland intends to procure one million anti-personnel land mines at a cost of €100 million ($112 million), marking the sharpest reversal of post-Cold War disarmament norms in Northern Europe. Colonel Riku Mikkonen of the Army Command confirmed that the military is now gathering information from suppliers, with contracts targeted by end of 2027 and production running by 2028. Helsinki wants domestic manufacturers — about half a dozen Finnish firms qualify — though foreign procurement is not ruled out. The purchase follows Finland's formal exit from the Ottawa Convention, the international treaty banning anti-personnel mines that Helsinki joined in 2012. The withdrawal took effect in January 2025, with Prime Minister Petteri Orpo citing Russia as a "long-term threat." Finland is not acting alone. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland — all among Ukraine's staunchest NATO allies — have also quit the agreement, creating a coordinated bloc of frontline states rebuilding mine warfare capability along NATO's eastern flank. The strategic logic is straightforward: Finland shares a 1,340-kilometre border with Russia, the longest in the EU. Since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Helsinki has joined NATO, beefed up conventional defenses, and reported that Russia has pushed migrants across the border as hybrid warfare. Anti-personnel mines are a relatively cheap force multiplier for defending vast, forested terrain against a numerically superior adversary — exactly the scenario Finland's defense planners now model. The procurement preference for domestic production is deliberate and telling. Building mine manufacturing capacity inside Finland creates supply chain independence from allies and creates industrial surge capability for wartime. This is not just buying weapons; it is rebuilding an industrial base that was deliberately dismantled after the Ottawa Convention. The €100 million price tag for one million mines works out to roughly €100 per unit — cheap by any defense procurement standard. Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen extended the pressure campaign beyond defense, urging the EU to stop issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens until the war ends. She noted that Schengen countries granted nearly half a million tourist visas to Russians in 2025, while Finland banned such visas in 2022. The visa push and the mine procurement are two facets of the same strategic posture: treating Russia as a structural adversary, not a temporary problem. The humanitarian cost is real and should not be dismissed. The Ottawa Convention exists because anti-personnel mines kill and maim civilians for decades after conflicts end — a lesson from Cambodia, Angola, and the Balkans. Finland is betting that the deterrent value against a specific, named adversary outweighs the long-term civilian risk, a calculation that only holds if mine deployment is disciplined and mapped. The treaty's 164 signatories have not changed their assessment; five frontline states have simply decided the math looks different at 1,340 kilometres from Moscow. What emerges is a pattern of NATO's eastern members building national defense capacity that does not depend on allied consensus or extended deterrence alone. Finland sheltering under France's nuclear umbrella, the Baltic states rearming with mines, Poland's massive military expansion — these are countries that watched Ukraine and concluded that self-reliance in the first 72 hours of a conflict is non-negotiable.
