Finland's lawmakers vote to leave land mine treaty as Nordic country boosts defenses against Russia
HELSINKI (AP) — Finland's parliament voted overwhelmingly to pull out of a major international treaty on antipersonnel land mines Thursday as the Nordic country seeks to boost its defenses against an increasingly assertive Russia next door.
Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) land border with Russia and joined NATO in 2023. Finland says land mines could be used to defend its vast and rugged terrain in the event of an attack. Finnish lawmakers voted 157-18 to move forward on a government proposal to leave the Ottawa Convention.
The Nordics and Baltics have been sounding the alarm on a potential Russian incursion since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Analysts say Ukraine is among the countries that are the most affected by land mines and discarded explosives, as a result of Russia's ongoing war.
The Ottawa Convention was signed in 1997, and went into force in 1999. Nearly three dozen countries have not acceded to it, including some key current and past producers and users of land mines such as the United States, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Russia.
In a report released last year by Landmine Monitor, the international watchdog said land mines were still actively being used in 2023 and 2024 by Russia, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea.
In the Baltics, lawmakers in Latvia and Lithuania earlier this year voted to exit the treaty.
Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said civilians will pay the price if more countries leave the treaty.
'The global consensus that once made anti-personnel mines a symbol of inhumanity is starting to fracture,' Spoljaric said in a news release earlier this week. 'This is not just a legal retreat on paper—it risks endangering countless lives and reversing decades of hard-fought humanitarian progress.'
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Hamilton Spectator
41 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
For Mark Carney, every decision has trade-offs — but that's not slowing him down
OTTAWA—If there is a Carney 'doctrine' taking shape more than 100 days into the prime ministership of Mark Carney, maybe it is this: get it done, and damn the details. A few short months ago, Carney was blunt: 'I am a pragmatist above all. So when I see something that's not working, I will change it.' That's what the former central banker and UN climate finance envoy said when he captured the Liberal party leadership to replace Justin Trudeau. He went on to win the 2025 federal election on his outsider's pitch to rescue the economy from the threat of Donald Trump's tariff war. Pragmatism was how he justified abrupt domestic moves: ditching the consumer carbon tax, reversing capital gains tax hikes, and lowering income taxes while jamming 'nation-building' red-tape-cutting bills through Parliament to juice the economy. Pragmatism helps explain why, in his single mandate letter to cabinet ministers, Carney told them, 'We must redefine Canada's international, commercial, and security relationships.' But in an era where Trump is the one defining Canada's closest relationship, it's not clear if Carney's pragmatism can win over the U.S. president's chaos. On Friday, the unpredictable Trump cancelled talks towards a new deal with Canada, angry at Canada's deadline Monday for Big Tech giants to pay a digital services tax. Retroactive to 2022, it would collect $2.3 billion at first, and about $900 million yearly after that. Small potatoes compared to what Carney has already put on Canada's tab. In hopes of getting along with Trump, Carney in the past week promised to ramp up Canada's spending, along with NATO allies — all under intense pressure from the U.S. president — to a whopping $150 billion a year on military and related spending, a level almost unthinkable last year, as he vows to shift Canadian economic and security ties away from America towards Europe and beyond. In a spate of a few weeks, Carney signed what he calls a new economic, security and defence partnership with the European Union, increased aid to Ukraine, hosted a G7 summit where he offered backing of Trump's leadership efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and left a wide open runway for Trump to handle the Iran-Israel conflict as he saw fit. Carney defended his vow to lead where the U.S. does not, telling CNN it should be seen as a 'positive' not a negative reaction 'against' the U.S. or Trump. 'The way we would like to lead, the way European Union would like to lead, a number of Asian countries as well, is in a positive respect. If the U.S. is pulling back from multilateralism, as it is with respect to trade … effectively U.S. trade policy is now bilateral — if the U.S. is pulling back, there are others of us who do believe in multilateralism,' the rule of law, 'fair and open' trade, and in defence co-operation, said Carney. 'Do something,' seems to be the Carney mantra, said Kerry Buck, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO who welcomed the prime minister's commitment hit the new NATO military spending goal of five per cent of GDP. Although Justin Trudeau eventually committed to reaching the old NATO two per cent target at the end of last year's summit, he did so without a clear plan and with a 2032 timeline that was 'clearly going to damage our bilateral relations with the U.S. under Trump, where we're very vulnerable on trade,' said Buck, speaking before Trump's move Friday. In contrast, two weeks ahead of this week's NATO summit Carney accelerated action, said he'd hit two per cent this year, and at the summit adopted the bigger five per cent goal by 2035 with no hesitation. ' It was smart transactionally to do that. And I think in terms of content, it was also necessary,' Buck said. Others wonder how Carney is going to pay for it all. Questions remain about how the government will reach its two per cent promise this year, with the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer saying it can't verify Carney's plan to hit the old target. 'Some might start to think that he has a guns-before-butter kind of approach to foreign policy … a muscular foreign policy focused on defence,' but Buck said Carney had no choice, given it was 'our most vulnerable point' with the U.S. in ongoing trade talks. Forget the 'peace dividend' that Canada and other western allies hailed at the end of the Cold War, welcoming the ability to spend less on the military and more on social welfare systems. Now Carney and the other leaders challenged by Trump are embracing what NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte called a 'defence dividend,' claiming that spending five per cent of GDP on defence will create 'an engine of growth for our economies, driving literally millions of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.' Carney echoed the claim, acknowledging higher military spending may one day entail federal spending trade-offs or sacrifices, but for now, 'more of it will help build our economy at the same time as it improves our defence. And we'll get the benefits.' There is more continuity than many think between Trudeau and Carney: Carney continued the imposition of counter-tariffs against the U.S. that Trudeau launched. But he has withheld tit-for-tat retaliation against the 50 per cent steel and aluminum penalties Trump levied pending the outcome of trade talks. Carney has continued Trudeau's staunch support for Ukraine and its embattled president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Carney backs a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, a ceasefire in Gaza, and went so far as to sanction two Israeli cabinet ministers. Like Trudeau, Carney believes government has a role and responsibility to address climate change. That Carney has moved swiftly on foreign and defence files is partly due to the flow of the international summits that coincided with his first two months after winning the April 28 election. It's also due to the urgency of the threat posed by the 'tariff' president in the White House. Carney, though, has a view of the larger global economic imbalances and the roles of China and the U.S. in those imbalances, that he shares with leaders like France's President Emmanuel Macron, and as they try to persuade Trump to drop tariffs, Carney seeks to position Canada's critical mineral, AI and quantum computing sectors for a world in which those imbalances continue. Janice Gross Stein said it is too early to describe a Carney 'doctrine' but it's clear 'the fundamental thing for him is that he, like everyone, is defining a path to dealing with a very different United States.' Carney is of necessity pursuing a new more predictable economic and security deal with the U.S. at a time of crisis , 'but it's an eyes-open arrangement,' Stein said. 'Yes, we need to diversify our partnerships — that's not a new idea in Canadian foreign policy … and yes,' Carney is focusing especially on Europe and like-minded states, and NATO, 'but that's built in to dealing with the more demanding United States.' Stein sees a pragmatic streak too in Carney's overtures to countries like China, India and Saudi Arabia. Carney identified China as the biggest threat to Canada's national security during the federal election. But in office, he's taken steps to thaw relations and ease Beijing's penalties on Canadian agricultural products. At the same time he is moving to block Chinese steel dumping via higher tariff rates against transshipment countries — in line with U.S. concerns. He rolled out a G7 welcome mat to India's Narendra Modi as a criminal investigation struggles to probe India's role in the killing of a Canadian Sikh in Surrey. And Carney invited Saudi Arabia Crown prince Mohamed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, who declined to attend, in a week where the Saudi regime executed a journalist. Those three countries, China, India and Saudi Arabia are key economic players that are ignored at Canada's peril, said Stein. 'Where he's a pragmatist is in the recognition that every decision has trade-offs. You cannot make it a high priority to diversify your partnerships when you are the smaller next-door neighbour to a country that you are sending 75 per cent of your exports to and buying 75 per cent of everything that you buy in defence from that one country, which is the United States, and then continue to exclude others in the international community.' In parallel, said Stein, Carney is acting to ensure that Canada's economy is 'fit for purpose.' The bill to fast-track 'nation-building' development projects is part of that effort, as is his move to do 'important' consultation with Indigenous groups, but done simultaneously with other reviews, 'not sequentially,' she said. Carney is 'connecting defence, foreign policy to the Canadian economy because that's his comfort zone,' said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. But she worries the emphasis on 'pragmatic' sends the wrong signal to countries like China, India or Saudi Arabia which will interpret it to mean Canada is ready to overlook human rights concerns in favour of doing business. Jonathan Berkshire Miller, director of foreign affairs, national defence and security policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said Carney is necessarily focused on 'two imperatives: mending the relationship with the United States and diversification from it.' And while Carney's experience gives him credibility in Washington 'where he is well known among economic and diplomatic elites,' Trump's second term makes traditional diplomatic approaches 'increasingly unrealistic,' he said. There is an inevitable geographic and economic reality, he said in a written response to the Star. 'America remains Canada's largest trading partner.' So rather than a drastic shift or severing of ties, he said, 'Expect, instead, a policy of pragmatic hedging: building multilateral ties while trying to be on balanced terms' with who is in the White House. For now, Carney may have some latitude, he believes. Increased defence spending can bring Canada greater strategic autonomy on Arctic sovereignty, cybersecurity and intelligence sharing. The narrow question is 'one of political will' where the requirements for sustained federal spending 'and public support' will be the big test, he said, particularly in an era where 'fiscal retrenchment' (Carney has vowed to bring the operating budget into balance) and 'domestic political division are the contemporary realities.' The broader question is whether Carney's pragmatic approach can secure both.
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
NATO Scrambles Fighter Jets After Russia's Largest Air Assault on Ukraine
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. NATO countries scrambled fighter jets early on Sunday, according to the Polish military, after a Ukrainian official said Moscow had launched its largest-scale air attack on the country in more than three years. Poland's Operational Command said its fighter jets, along with other NATO aircraft, were scrambled with ground-based air defenses and reconnaissance systems put on the "highest state of readiness" after Russia launched overnight attacks on Ukrainian territory. Warsaw's military said in a later statement NATO aircraft had finished operations after the "level of threat from missile strikes by Russian aviation on Ukrainian territory" reduced. No Russian missiles or drones entered Polish airspace, the command said. Ukrainian authorities said Russia had launched 477 drones and decoys, as well as 60 missiles of various types, at Ukraine overnight. FILE - An F-16 fighter jet takes part in the NATO Air Shielding exercise near the air base in Lask, central Poland on October 12, 2022. FILE - An F-16 fighter jet takes part in the NATO Air Shielding exercise near the air base in Lask, central Poland on October 12, 2022. RADOSLAW JOZWIAK/AFP via Getty Images The attacks into Sunday were the largest airstrikes on Ukraine of more than three years of full-scale war in the country in terms of number of incoming threats, Colonel Yuriy Ignat, an official with Ukraine's air force, confirmed to Newsweek. Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have occasionally spilled over into NATO nations like Poland and Romania, which border Ukraine. NATO members are collectively obliged to respond to attacks on alliance nations with full force. Drones and missiles entering NATO airspace have not been treated as attacks on the alliance so far, but Polish authorities have repeatedly scrambled aircraft because of Moscow's aerial attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities in the western Lviv and Volyn regions, bordering Poland, reported air alerts overnight, but no casualties. Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said overnight "a massive attack on the western regions of Ukraine is underway," targeting critical infrastructure. Updates to follow.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Russia launches biggest aerial attack on Ukraine since start of the war
Russia launched its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine overnight, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday, part of an escalating bombing campaign that has further dashed hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the three-year-old war. Russia fired a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, Ukraine's air force said. Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, probably having been electronically jammed. Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine's air force, told the Associated Press that the overnight onslaught was 'the most massive air strike' on the country, taking into account both drones and various types of missiles. The attack targeted regions across Ukraine, including western Ukraine, far from the frontline. Poland and allied countries scrambled aircraft to ensure the safety of Polish airspace, the Polish air force said Sunday. Kherson regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said one person died in a drone strike, and another was killed when a drone hit a car in the Kharkiv region, according to its governor Oleh Syniehubov. Six people were wounded in Cherkasy, including a child, according to regional governor Ihor Taburets. In the Lviv region in the far west of Ukraine, a fire broke out at an industrial facility in the city of Drohobych after a drone attack, which also forced parts of the city to lose power. Ukraine's air force also said one of the F-16 warplanes Ukraine received from its western partners to help fight Russia's invasion crashed after sustaining damage while shooting down air targets. The pilot died when the fighter jet went down. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow is ready for a fresh round of direct peace talks in Istanbul, however the war shows no signs of abating as US-led international peace efforts have so far produced no breakthrough. Two recent rounds of talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul were brief and yielded no progress on reaching a settlement. Long-range drone strikes have been a hallmark of the war, now in its fourth year. The race by both sides to develop increasingly sophisticated and deadlier drones has turned the conflict into a testing ground for new weaponry.
