{"id":425785,"date":"2024-11-27T06:53:51","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T06:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=425785"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Ukraine-says-Russia-using-landmines-to-carry-out-genocidal-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Ukraine-says-Russia-using-landmines-to-carry-out-genocidal-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine says Russia using landmines to carry out ‘genocidal activities’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia is carrying out “genocidal activities” by laying landmines on Ukraine’s territory, an official from Kyiv’s defence ministry told a landmine conference in Cambodia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Russian forces were planting landmines in cities, farming households and public transport stations “remotely by means of artillery, helicopters, multiple rocket launch systems and drones”, said Oleksandr Riabtsev.<\/p>\n

These “genocidal activities” had affected areas home to six million people, the Ukrainian defence official told a landmine conference in Cambodia’s Siem Reap.<\/p>\n

It comes a week after Washington announced that it would supply anti-personnel landmines to Kyiv to help its forces battle Russian troops, a decision immediately criticised by human rights campaigners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United States and Russia are not signatories to the anti-landmine convention.<\/p>\n

– Stockpile destruction ‘not possible’ –<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Ukraine is a signatory of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention and has committed to destroying its stockpile of landmines, but has previously missed deadlines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another Ukrainian defence official told the conference Kyiv would not fulfil a pledge to destroy around six million landmines left over from the Soviet Union.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The commitment made in connection with the convention’s Oslo Action Plan is “currently not possible” due to Russia’s invasion, Yevhenii Kivshyk said.<\/p>\n

Arsenals and other sites where anti-personnel mines are stored “have been under constant air and missile strikes by the armed forces of the Russian Federation”, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“In addition, some of them are in the territories that are currently under occupation by the Russian armed forces,” Kivshyk said.<\/p>\n

Therefore there was “no possibility whatsoever to conduct audit and verification of the anti-personnel mine stocks”, he added.<\/p>\n

Kivshyk made no mention of the US offer to supply landmines to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Moscow and Kyiv have been ratcheting up their drone and missile attacks, with Ukraine recently firing US long-range missiles at Russia and the Kremlin retaliating with an experimental hypersonic missile.<\/p>\n

– ‘Horrors of these weapons’ –<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Landmine victims from across the world gathered at the meeting to protest Washington’s decision.<\/p>\n

More than 100 demonstrators lined the walkway taken by delegates to the conference venue where countries are reviewing progress on the anti-personnel mine ban treaty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Look what antipersonnel landmines will do to your people,” read one placard held by two landmine victims.<\/p>\n

Alex Munyambabazi, who lost a leg to a landmine in northern Uganda in 2005, said he “condemned” the decision by the United States to supply anti-personnel mines to Kyiv.<\/p>\n

“We are tired. We don’t want to see any more victims like me, we don’t want to see any more suffering,” he told AFP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Every landmine planted is a child, a civilian, a woman, who is just waiting for their legs to be blown off, for his life to be taken.<\/p>\n

“I am here to say we don’t want any more victims. No excuses, no exceptions.”<\/p>\n

Ukraine using the US mines would be in “blatant disregard for their obligations under the mine ban treaty”, said Tamar Gabelnick, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.<\/p>\n

“These weapons have no place in today’s warfare,” she told AFP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ukrainians “have suffered long enough from the horrors of these weapons”.<\/p>\n

suy-rma\/ecl\/rsc<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Activists and landmine survivors hold placards decrying the US decision to supply anti-personnel landmines to Ukrainian forces<\/p>\n

-TANG CHHIN Sothy
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