Policy

Ukraine signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 24 February 1999 and ratified on 27 December 2005, becoming a State Party on 1 June 2006.

Ukraine has not enacted national legislation, including penal sanctions, to enforce the prohibitions of the Mine Ban Treaty domestically as required in Article 9. It has reported existing regulations under national implementation measures, as well as a 2012 law to ratify an agreement with a NATO agency to destroy stockpiles.[1]

Ukraine submitted its tenth Article 7 transparency report on 1 April 2016, covering calendar year 2015.

Since the Second Review Conference in 2009, Ukraine has attended almost all treaty meetings, including the Mine Ban Treaty Fourteenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in December 2015 and the intersessional Standing Committee meetings held in May 2016. Ukraine did not attend the Third Review Conference of the Mine Ban Treaty in Maputo in June 2014.

Ukraine is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war (ERW). It submitted a national annual report for Amended Protocol II, but has not submitted a national annual report for Protocol V.

Production and transfer

Ukraine has declared that it “has not made and does not produce antipersonnel mines.”[2] It has not produced antipersonnel mines since its independence.[3] Ukraine is not known to have exported antipersonnel mines. Its 1999 moratorium on the export of antipersonnel mines, formally in place through 2003, in practice stayed in effect until the Mine Ban Treaty entered into force for Ukraine in 2006.

Use

Landmines appear to be a part of the conflict between government forces and Russian-backed separatists that erupted in early 2014 initially in Crimea, then in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. There is significant evidence present at different locations that antipersonnel mines of Soviet-origin with production markings from the 1980s are available to combatants and unconfirmed reports of emplaced antipersonnel mines being found in the field. Ukraine has accused Russian forces of laying antivehicle and antipersonnel mines on Ukrainian territory.

Since 2014, the government of Ukraine stated that it had not used antipersonnel landmines in the conflict and accused Russian forces of laying landmines in Ukraine.[4] In December 2014, Ukrainian government officials stated that “no banned weapons” had been used in the “Anti-Terrorist Operations Zone” by Ukrainian armed forces or forces associated with them, such as volunteer battalions.[5]

In February 2016, Ukraine informed the Mine Ban Treaty Committee on Cooperative Compliance that “its Armed Forces are authorized to use mines in command-detonate mode, which is not prohibited under the Convention. All mines planted in command-detonate mode are recorded, secured and access is restricted.”[6]

Ukrainian civilian and military officials have accused separatist non-state armed groups (NSAGs) of using antipersonnel mines, including victim-activated improvised explosive devices (IEDs). At the Mine Ban Treaty Fourteenth Meeting of the States Parties in December 2015, Ukraine stated that there were mined areas in territory under its jurisdiction but not under its control. In addition to those areas, it said that “sabotage acts are carried out on its territory which is under the control of Ukraine, including mining territory and infrastructure.”[7]

In November 2015, an officer from the General Staff informed soldiers that separatist NSAGs were using landmines attached to fish hooks and fishing lines to snag the clothing of soldiers as they moved through wooded areas, thereby detonating nearby mines.[8] In May 2016, two Ukrainian army engineers in Donetsk region were injured by an antipersonnel mine as they were checking the area for explosives.[9]

In September 2016, Ukraine’s Department of Defense Intelligence reported that pro-Russian separatists had laid POM-2 antipersonnel mines.[10] Later that month, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine reported the presence of antivehicle and antipersonnel mines that it said were preventing the SMM representatives from traveling from Pervomaisk toward Zolote, between Mykolaiv province and Luhansk province.[11]

Stockpiling and destruction

Ukraine missed its 1 June 2010 treaty-mandated deadline for the destruction of all stockpiled antipersonnel mines and has therefore been in violation of the Mine Ban Treaty ever since.[12] The requirement to destroy almost six million PFM-type antipersonnel mines was a key obstacle that prevented Ukraine from rapidly ratifying the Mine Ban Treaty.[13] For years, Ukraine repeated at nearly every formal and informal Mine Ban Treaty meeting that it would depend on international support for the destruction of its stockpiles.[14]

The types and quantities of antipersonnel mines Ukraine has reported in its stockpile have varied over the years. The highest total of 6,664,342 mines of nine different types was detailed in Landmine Monitor Report 2006.[15]

In its Article 7 report for calendar year 2015, Ukraine declared a stockpile of 5,564,429 antipersonnel mines: 5,414,728 PFM-type and 149,096 POM-2 remotely-delivered mines, and 605 OZM-4 hand-emplaced bounding fragmentation mines.[16] Ukraine also reported the destruction of 19,944 mines in 2015.[17] It declared the destruction of 576 mines in 2014, 332,352 mines in 2013, 22,604 mines in 2012, and 9,890 mines in 2011.[18] From 1999 to 2010, Ukraine destroyed significant quantities of stockpiled antipersonnel mines using both its own resources and international assistance.[19]

At the May 2016 intersessional meetings, Ukraine stated that on 19 October 2015, an additional agreement was reached among the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, NATO Support and Procurement Agency, and the Pavlograd Chemical Plant for the resumption of destruction of stockpiles of PFM-type antipersonnel mines. Within the context of this agreement, a total of 642,960 PFM-1 mines are slated to be destroyed between 2015 and the end of 2016; 233,496 were destroyed by 1 May 2016.[20]