In an incredible, bittersweet success story, Croatia has announced it has freed itself from the scourge of landmines, 31 years after the country’s civil war.
It is extremely unlikely we’re literally free of mines. You can clean up an area, and yet miss a few mines. Mines can sink under ground through time, and reappear again as the soil moves around. People have died in supposedly mine-free areas. Thankfully the numbers have been minimised, but you can never be 100% sure.
Yeah, the german article I originally read mentioned that, too. But tbh, I was a bit lazy and didn’t want to translate bit by bit with Deepl’s free version 😅
On one hand, that’s good.
On the other hand, it does provide some very sobering perspective on how hard it will be to demine Ukraine, a much larger task.
IIRC modern mines automatically deactivate after some time?
It sounds like there’s a variant of the PFM-1, the small “butterfly” mine, that does self-destruct (the PFM-1S). I don’t believe that the larger ones generally do, though, and if so, a search doesn’t turn up material on them.
My understanding is that the mine designs that Russia (and Ukraine) have in inventory tend to date to the Cold War, too.
I choose to view this as good news. At least because I need good news.
Another positive perspective: it might take a long time but it’s possible to do it! It doesn’t have to lead to permanent scars.
(453 (sq mi)) / 1,500,000 = 0.19328 acres
For visualisation, that’s one landmine per median-sized suburban lot over an area a little less than than 1/3 of Rhode Island.
Dude, this is c/Europe. “Rhode Island” and “Suburban Lot” are not comparisons that work here in any capacity 😂
Didn’t pay attention to what community I was in! In fairness, the original post mentioned square miles.
For the Europeans: in a parking lot of 238 million Fiat Pandas (1995 model year) packed bumper-to-bumper and mirror to mirror, there’s a landmine under every 158th car.
They were useful for me, an American happy to see fewer landmines in the world. 🤷♂️
no country of mine
