Finland Landmines: Why It Is Buying One Million Mines

The Finnish Defence Forces are preparing to purchase around one million anti-personnel mines from domestic manufacturers, in a program worth approximately €100 million that would restore the stockpile Finland held before joining the Ottawa Convention in 2012. The plan was set out by the Defence Forces’ own magazine Ruotuväki and by Colonel Riku Mikkonen, inspector of engineers at the Finnish Army Command, in an interview with the national news agency STT published on October 19. No contracts have yet been signed, with contracts targeted for the end of 2027 and production in Finland expected to begin in 2028. The program reflects how seriously states on NATO’s border with Russia now treat the prospect of a ground war, with a weapon most of Europe abandoned a generation ago returning to frontline planning.

Two types of mine are sought in the first phase: a modern tube mine triggered by a tripwire and a pressure-activated step mine, with more technically advanced remotely delivered mines possibly following later. Mikkonen stated that around half a dozen Finnish companies can produce the weapons. A purchase from abroad has not been ruled out entirely, although domestic production is preferred so that output can be expanded rapidly in a crisis. “We will soon move on to the stage where we issue requests for tenders, so that we can eventually proceed to a competitive tendering process and conclude contracts,” he said. The first new mines and training equipment are expected during 2027 and the last deliveries in the 2030s, with the Defence Forces having stressed that the mines will be stored rather than laid in peacetime.

The purchase follows Finland’s withdrawal from the convention, which the government announced in April 2025, parliament approved on June 19 that year and which took effect on January 10, 2026. Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have taken the same step, citing the threat from Russia, and Poland’s planned acquisition of 14.7 million anti-personnel mines could make it one of the largest stockpilers in the world, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Finland shares a border of around 1,340 kilometres with Russia, which reestablished its Leningrad Military District in 2024 and formed a new 44th Army Corps in the Republic of Karelia facing Finnish territory. The wider eastern flank of NATO has meanwhile come under growing pressure, with Romanian F-16 fighters having shot down two jet-powered Geran drones near Sulina on October 17 while Ukraine has been running short of Patriot interceptors against Russian ballistic missiles.

Finland held more than one million domestically made anti-personnel mines when it acceded to the convention, and the Defence Forces announced in August 2015 that the stockpile had been destroyed. A 2025 report by the Finnish parliament’s defence committee put the old inventory at around 800,000 step mines and 230,000 tube mines, the same two categories the new program is now set to replace. Finland retains a considerable arsenal of anti-tank and anti-vehicle mines, most of them locally produced, which were never covered by the treaty. Russia, which never signed the convention and has used anti-personnel mines extensively in Ukraine, declared a stockpile of 26.5 million in 2004 and has published no figures on its stocks since 2010, according to the Landmine Monitor.