Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Helsinki’s eastern frontier has quietly become Europe’s hardest line against Moscow.
Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer land border with Russia, is now preparing a large-scale rebuild of its ground-mine arsenal.
The country left the international treaty banning anti-personnel mines earlier this year, and the first concrete number behind that pivot has now surfaced.
The Finnish Defence Forces plan to buy around one million anti-personnel mines, with a budget of about €100 million, Helsinki Times reports, citing comments from Colonel Riku Mikkonen of the Finnish Army Command to Finnish news agency STT. Mikkonen said preparations began after Finland’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention took effect in January 2026.
Procurement contracts are targeted by the end of 2027, and domestic production is meant to be running by 2028. About six Finnish companies are considered capable of manufacturing the munitions.
A domestic supply line is the goal
Helsinki wants the order filled at home rather than from abroad. “It would be useful in many ways if Finnish companies produced the anti-personnel mines in Finland,” Mikkonen told STT, in comments carried by Helsinki Times, adding that foreign purchases are not ruled out at this stage.
The Defence Forces plan to acquire two types of mines, according to the Helsinki Times report: tripwire-activated devices placed above ground, and pressure-activated models laid on or just beneath the surface.
Finnish military personnel began training conscripts and reservists to lay tripwire- and pressure-activated anti-personnel devices in early 2026, after roughly a decade in which victim-activated mines were absent from the country’s arsenal.
From treaty signatory to active user
Finland joined the Ottawa Convention in 2012. The government announced its intention to withdraw in April 2025, citing a worsening security climate, and deposited its instrument of withdrawal on July 10, 2025, with the exit becoming effective on January 10, 2026, according to Landmine Monitor.
Before that date, Finland retained 15,509 anti-personnel mines from its earlier stockpile for training purposes, Landmine Monitor reports. The one-million figure now under preparation would restore a mine inventory several orders of magnitude larger.
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has described Russia as a long-term threat to Finland. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have also exited the Ottawa Convention since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, part of a wider hardening of Europe’s eastern flank.
The Winter War
Three months after the outbreak of WWII, the Soviet Union invaded Finland in late November 1939.
Despite overwhelming superiority in tanks and aircraft, the Red Army suffered severe losses against determined Finnish resistance before brute-force numerical advantages forced a breakthrough months later.
After three and a half months of fighting, the Moscow Peace Treaty was signed in March 1940, forcing Finland to cede roughly 9% of its territory to the Soviet Union.
By the war’s end, Finland had suffered approximately 70,000 casualties, while Soviet casualties reached an estimated 321,000 to 381,000.
