cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/16759425
Lithuania installed “dragon’s teeth” and mines in front of the bridge on the border with the Kaliningrad region
“This is a precautionary step to ensure more effective defense,” the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said on Twitter. The ministry explained that the Queen Louise Bridge is Russian property, so Lithuania cannot install “dragon’s teeth” and mines on the bridge itself, but only in front of it.
I do not like the invasion either but putting landmines on fields and roads is something else
I don’t get the downvotes. Landmines are a huge issue. The balkan countries are still struggling with them 30 years after the wars. Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq… every “theater” of war, where landmines have been used are, still struggling with them decades and decades more after. Ukraine too will suffer for decades.
If there is an inevitable military need for them, there is no alternative. But they should not be used lightly and i am fairly certain, that Lithuania is not doing so lightly either.
The big problem is, that for now the only reliable technique to remove landmines from an area is to dig up the area step by step. This is extremely costly and still dangerous, despite all effort in using robots, animals detecting the explosives and so on. So i hope Lithuania triple counted the mines they put and keeps that record very well.
The problem doesn’t really come from small fields like this. It’s when you hand them out by the truckload and tell every unit to go wild. Russia has had numerous cases where they didn’t even tell their own friendly units where the mines were, so I’d say that’s a much bigger issue than this little where the whole world knows about it.
The problem is a little more deeper than that - the very nature of mines is that they are indiscriminate. Whether you’re one force, another force, a civilian, or an animal - it does it’s job and goes boom without any further intervention by a human.
The remainder of your point is absolutely valid, but mines are a shit idea from the outset. Area denial is indeed a tactic, but alliances and boundaries change, and what was once a defensive line may be a suburban district in a hundred years time, until a future innocent party detonates one underfoot and is killed or severely maimed.
I thought mines were prohibited under the Geneva Suggestions, but perhaps there’s a loophole somewhere.
Unfortunately, landmines are a small part of a large problem: unexploded munitions last centuries. Artillery, rockets, grenades, mines, explosives, even large ammo dumps can stick around and explode decades later.
Here’s an active one from WW1 that is still uninhabitable because of the danger:
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/red-zone/
The intense fighting and shelling near the tiny town of Verdun has permanently altered the region surrounding the Meuse River in northeastern France. The environmental destruction left by the battle led to the creation of the Zone Rouge—the Red Zone. The Zone Rouge is a 42,000-acre territory that, nearly a century after the conflict, has no human residents and only allows limited access.
