Today Lithuania is considering whether to denounce the convention, tomorrow Latvia and Estonia will think about the same, and why not Finland. Humanity goes "to the cinema from six to five", as the Sofia shufflers once said. With the joint efforts of Russia, Iran, North Korea and other talented actors, we can achieve complete meaninglessness of the Ottawa Convention, due to a mass refusal to comply with the commitments associated with it.
It would be no surprise if the municipality of Geneva should take a decision to remove from the city center the famous art installation - "The Broken Chair" (more precisely, "The Chair Left Without One Leg"), which was installed for a short time as a protest against the misuse of anti-personnel mines and has remained in place for decades since then.
The tragedy in Ukraine has long since turned the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the other conflicts in the South Caucasus into a secondary issue for the public. On the other hand, the energy security of Southeast Europe directly depends on the state of affairs south of the Main Caucasus Range, but that is not the topic here.
The issue is about Azerbaijan’s angry protests over Armenia’s military turning the then-occupied seven Azerbaijani administrative districts surrounding the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region into minefields. If the seven districts were turned into potato fields, it is debatable whether as many potatoes could be planted there as anti-personnel mines are buried in the present-day Karabakh region.
Both the official authorities in Azerbaijan and prominent Azerbaijani public figures – in this case, Professor Namik Aliyev – are outraged by the widespread use of anti-personnel mines, which are explicitly prohibited by an international convention – the Ottawa Convention. (Look: https://blacksea-caspia.eu ).
Armenia is turning a deaf ear, stating that Yerevan has not ratified the Ottawa Convention and therefore they have not violated any international law. This is probably why they are not providing maps of existing minefields and are even providing false information to the Azerbaijani side.
All this is very instructive and it is useful for one to read what is said by a smart and erudite person like Professor Namik Aliyev.
However, I want to draw attention to another aspect of the issue.
Anti-personnel mines are a great evil. They are designed not to kill, but to maim. The perverse logic of anti-personnel mines is that the enemy should not simply suffer losses in manpower. The enemy should also be burdened with countless disabled soldiers - people with severe physical disabilities. The enemy should be exposed to costs, large costs for disabled soldiers. Let the enemy writhe.
From a purely human point of view, this is terrible and disgusting. At the same time, when a great power threatens a smaller country, the latter has the right to defend itself by any means that do not lead to the end of the world.
And here – these days Lithuania has signaled that it intends to denounce the Ottawa Convention it has ratified, due to the threatening signals of impending aggression from neighboring Russia. (If someone reproaches me for fantasizing about impending aggression, I will answer – “Your mouth in God’s ears”, but we remember that not very long Russia was not going to attack Ukraine either. You remember the choral declamations and oaths of both Masha Zakharova and Lavrov, who is becoming more and more convincing in his fight for a nomination for a leading role in a performance on the stage of the International Criminal Court).
Today Lithuania is considering whether to denounce the convention, tomorrow Latvia and Estonia will think about the same, and why not Finland. Humanity goes "to the cinema from six to five", as the Sofia shufflers once said. With the joint efforts of Russia, Iran, North Korea and other talented actors, we can achieve complete meaninglessness of the Ottawa Convention, due to a mass refusal to comply with the commitments associated with it.
It would be no surprise if the municipality of Geneva should take a decision to remove from the city center the famous art installation - "The Broken Chair" (more precisely, "The Chair Left Without One Leg"), which was installed for a short time as a protest against the misuse of anti-personnel mines and has remained in place for decades since then.
Well, if this is the case, President Trump will most likely announce that President Joe Biden is to blame, possibly Zelensky, and why not Petro Poroshenko, who did not allow Trump's emissary Rudy Giuliani to "collect" compromising material against Hunter Biden. However, we may not know about this wise saying because we do not use his social network ...