Finnish officials have sounded the alarm about the \u201cRussian threat,\u201d with Moscow denying it has plans to attack Western countries<\/p>\n
Finland on Saturday officially withdrew from the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines amid tensions with Russia over the Ukraine conflict.
\nThe Finnish government announced it would leave the treaty \u2013 to which Helsinki has been a signatory since 2012 \u2013 on July 10 last year, triggering a six-month countdown under the rules of the convention.
\nIn June, Finnish President Alexander Stubb argued that the country faces \u201can aggressive, imperialist state\u201d as a neighbor, while Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen said that \u201cprotection against the Russian threat takes priority.\u201d Moscow has repeatedly dismissed speculation it could attack EU members and NATO as \u201cnonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Zelensky withdraws Ukraine from landmark anti-mine treaty<\/p>\n
When Helsinki \u2013 along with Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia \u2013 announced the decision, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the development \u201ctroubling,\u201d urging states to uphold humanitarian disarmament commitments and warning that anti-personnel mines pose long-term dangers to civilians even after wars end.
\nThe Ottawa Convention, adopted in 1997, bans the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines because of their indiscriminate impact. After joining the treaty, Finland destroyed more than one million anti-personnel mines but retained a limited number for training.
\nFinland\u2019s relations with Moscow frayed significantly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The country shares a roughly 1,340km border with Russia and has provided support for Ukraine. It joined NATO in April 2023, ending a decades-long neutrality policy.
\nKremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Moscow previously had \u201cno problems at all\u201d with Finland and Sweden \u2013 which also decided to join NATO \u2013 adding that companies from both countries \u201creceived dividends and benefits from this cooperation.\u201d He also stated that Moscow has never been the first to spoil relations with other countries and was open to fostering mutually beneficial ties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finnish officials have sounded the alarm about the \u201cRussian threat,\u201d with Moscow denying it has plans to attack Western countries Finland on Saturday officially withdrew from the Ottawa Convention banning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}