An international report says there were hundreds of landmine casualties in Ukraine in 2022. Meanwhile, Germany says the EU will not its target for sending artillery shells to Ukraine.
Presenting its annual report in Geneva, Switzerland, the ICBL on Tuesday said Russia had deployed landmines in 11 of Ukraine's 27 provinces since it initiated its war of aggression.
The result of that mining has been a dramatic tenfold rise in deaths and injuries, with the ICBL recording 608 Ukrainian casualties in 2022, as compared to 58 in 2021.
The group said Russia's extensive mining in Ukraine represents a unique situation in which a non-signatory to the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning the use of landmines — Russia, China, and the US are not signatories — is actively mining a signatory country. Ukraine is among those 164 countries that are party to the landmark agreement.
The treaty prohibits the production, transfer, stockpiling, and use of antipersonnel mines. Moreover, it obliges signatory countries to provide assistance to victims, to clear existing mines, and to destroy existing stockpiles.
The ICBL says Ukraine is currently, "investigating the circumstances of its forces using antipersonnel mines in and around the city of Izium, in Kharkiv oblast, in 2022, when the city was under Russian control."
According to the ICBL, which is comprised of over 1,000 NGOs in some 100 countries, 4,710 people were killed (1,700) or injured (3,010) by landmines in 49 states around the globe in 2022. It said civilians made up 85% of those casualties — with children accounting for half of those.
Source: Dw
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