Finland is returning to landmines. It will produce them itself.

According to Hakkanen, who was one of the keynote speakers at the Helsinki Security Forum on Friday, most of them will be simple, traditional anti-personnel mines.

They are designed, for example, to puncture a vehicle's tire or injure a person's body part if they step on it. However, he noted, smarter, more advanced solutions are also needed, including:

- However, in peacetime, mines will not be placed anywhere - he assured.

According to the minister, although Finland possesses significant defense potential, it is crucial that it not even become the target of an attack. " NATO's strength is the ultimate deterrent that keeps Russia away from our territory, and hybrid operations are completely different from a military challenge," Hakkanen concluded.

The Finnish Parliament decided to terminate the Ottawa Treaty banning, among other things, the use and production of anti-personnel mines in June. According to the Finnish Armed Forces, reinstating anti-personnel mines as part of the army's basic armament catalog "is not a technical choice, but a strategic tool for strengthening Finland's defenses, and the psychological effect (i.e., the deterrence associated with mines) cannot be replaced by other systems." Furthermore, it was emphasized at the time, "the long land border with Russia (approximately 1,300 km) makes Finland particularly vulnerable to large-scale attacks."

Finland joined the Ottawa Convention in 2012, becoming one of the last EU countries to do so. Since then, the Finns have destroyed a total of over 1 million mines banned by the treaty that they held.

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland also decided this year to withdraw from the treaty as part of a "regional agreement" between governments on the eastern flank.