Russian Land Mines Disguised as Toys Target the Children of Ukraine

R ecently, I was in the back seat of a police van next to Irina Pryanishnikova, a tall, slender, dark-haired officer of the Kyiv regional police. We were on our way to a Christmas party put on by the police for children at a nearby orphanage. She pulled out her phone and started scrolling through images, showing me photos of dolls, teddy bears, and soda cans. Each of these is a land mine designed to look like a toy or a commonly used item.

The Russians deliberately disguise small anti-personnel land mines in such innocuous-seeming items and conceal them in high-traffic areas, such as playgrounds, where they are likely to maim — but not kill — innocent children and civilians who pass by. This is a war crime that directly contravenes the Anti-Personnel Land Mines Ban Convention, which prohibits the use of these heinous weapons and requires action be taken to address their long-lasting effects. Member states of the United Nations must lean on this convention to put an end to this cruel and senseless violence and to ensure that the Russian perpetrators are tried at the International Court of Justice. Doing so will send a message that, even in war, terrorizing civilians is an unjustifiable act.

As Pryanishnikova swiped across her cellphone to show the different varieties of Russian land mines, we came to an image of what looked like leaves, small and colored to match the natural foliage. “These may look like leaves, and a conventional metal detector won’t recognize them, but each one contains ten grams of explosives,” she explained. They were planted on a children’s playground.

“Ten grams isn’t enough to kill a child,” she adds, “but the explosives hidden in the leaves will rip their foot off.” This is a well-known Russian tactic developed in Afghanistan and other countries. The cruelty is deliberate. The Russians calculate that for every child who has lost hands or arms, there is a caretaker who will be out of commission, caring for the disabled child. The medical expense of treating the child is also money that Ukraine can’t spend on defending itself.

In times of war, violence and weapons are more common than during peacetime. However, there are still limits to what is acceptable: First and foremost, there must be a justifiable military advantage behind one’s actions. The anti-personnel land mines serve no military purpose, aside from burdening and demoralizing Ukrainian civilians. Terrorizing people is “not considered to be an acceptable military advantage,” according to experts such as Maria Varaki from the war-studies department at King’s College London. In fact, terrorizing a civilian population is explicitly classified as a war crime.

The terror isn’t limited to the examples that Pryanishnikova showed me on her phone that night. According to Andriy Nebytov, chief of the Kyiv regional police, the Russians booby-trap people’s homes before Ukrainian cities, towns, or villages are liberated. They rig appliances that they know civilians will open, such as washing machines and microwave ovens. When the unsuspecting person opens the appliance, a mine is activated, often taking a limb with it.

The Russians use mine-laying vehicles to scatter hundreds of mines at a time across Ukrainian farmland used for necessary crops such as corn. Again, Russians prefer that the mines maim the victim rather than kill them, because they will require a lifetime of care and costly medical treatments, diverting attention and capability from the Ukrainian war effort.

“Even wars have rules,” the Red Cross notes. And when rules are broken — especially when these transgressions end in death and destruction — there need to be consequences. International agreements and treaties are only effective when they’re enforced. When the war subsides, the Western world must stand together to ensure that Russia’s army faces consequences for its war crimes. The biggest crime of all is the war itself, and Vladimir Putin alone is responsible for starting it.