Pope Leo XIV indicated on Saturday that his papacy will follow closely in the footsteps of the late Pope Francis, telling church cardinals that they should take up that “precious legacy” and identifying artificial intelligence as a main challenge for working people and “human dignity.”

Pope Leo, born in Chicago as Robert Prevost, was elected Thursday, becoming the first US-born pope to the surprise and delight of many Catholics across the Americas.

In his first formal meeting with cardinals, which began with a standing ovation, the new pontiff said he chose his papal name to continue down the path of Pope Leo XIII, who addressed “the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”

Pope Leo XIII ruled the Roman Catholic Church from 1878 until his death in 1903 and is remembered as a pope of Catholic social teaching. He wrote a famous open letter to all Catholics in 1891, called “Rerum Novarum” (“Of Revolutionary Change”), which reflected on the destruction wrought by the Industrial Revolution on the lives of workers.

“In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor,” the new American pontiff said Saturday, speaking in fluent Italian.

Wearing the white robes of the papacy, he strongly signaled to the cardinals that his leadership will build upon Pope Francis’ church reforms and legacy of social justice.

“It has been clearly seen in the example of so many of my predecessors, and most recently by Pope Francis himself, with his example of complete dedication to service and to sober simplicity of life, his abandonment to God throughout his ministry and his serene trust at the moment of his return to the Father’s house,” Pope Leo told the gathering. “Let us take up this precious legacy and continue on the journey, inspired by the same hope that is born of faith.”

He went on to ask the other senior church leaders to renew their commitment to the pivotal Second Vatican Council, which enacted sweeping church reforms in the 1960s. The modernizing reforms included allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than Latin for the first time.

Setting out that vision on Saturday, Leo said the church should be guided by a missionary focus, “growth in collegiality and synodality,” courageous dialogue with the contemporary world and “loving care for the least and the rejected.”

He also suggested that he will approach the weighty office with humility and fraternity.

“You, dear cardinals, are the closest collaborators of the pope. This has proved a great comfort to me in accepting a yoke clearly far beyond my own limited powers, as it would be for any of us,” Leo added.

“Your presence reminds me that the Lord, who has entrusted me with this mission, will not leave me alone in bearing its responsibility,” he said, also specifically thanking Dean of the College of Cardinals Giovanni Battista Re and the Camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, who was responsible for shepherding the church through the papal transition.

Pope Leo will appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica for a second time on Sunday to greet crowds of people in the square below. His installation Mass will take place the following week on Sunday, May 18.

It’s a proposal that the Kremlin can neither reject nor accept, but one that may force it into an awkward choice, revealing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s true appetite for his brutal war of choice.

Europe’s leaders have grasped the nettle of whether peace talks over Ukraine can lead anywhere meaningful, to force Moscow into a pause in violence, precisely when it seems to seek to escalate assaults in the summer months ahead.

It also gives Europe’s largest army – Ukraine – just over 30 hours to prepare their frontline forces for perhaps a month of tense peace, and then hopefully weeks of serious negotiation, in which the borders of their country will be decided.

Ultimately, Ukraine, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland faced little choice: the Trump administration’s very public loss of patience – sometimes with Moscow, but also less justifiably with Kyiv – carried the risk of the White House simply “moving on.” That could lead to the United States dropping aid to Ukraine, together with their efforts for a peaceful solution – a potential disaster for European security.

The past week’s clear enormous diplomatic lifting by French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and of course Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, has put the White House in a position where it has had to back a direct European bid to take control of the outcome of the biggest war on the continent since the 1940s.

Europe is indeed forcing on Russia a proposal initially made by the US and Ukraine – the 30-day unconditional ceasefire first offered after a bilateral meeting in Saudi Arabia almost two months ago. But they are also forcing the White House to step up, monitor the truce, and then back tough consequences – Macron called them “massive sanctions” – if the initiative falls apart.

Now the Kremlin’s previous answer of “we need to talk about the nuances” is not enough. It needs to agree, dispute, or ignore the proposal. It is likely it will, as we have seen in the past, contrive a complex fudge of a response.

Russia might agree to the pause, but then engineer a spike in violence it can accuse the Ukrainians of initiating. Or to dispute certain elements of the proposal – for instance, fighting back only against Ukrainian forces inside Russia’s Kursk or Belgorod regions – causing the White House to question whether they should angrily reject the Kremlin’s partial adherence to the truce. Moscow might choose to entirely ignore the proposal, and deploy their magical card of a Trump-Putin phone call to reshuffle the deck from which they’ve been dealt a difficult hand.

This is the most significant diplomatic moment of the war, perhaps the most important declaration of the conflict yet, and certainly the most important 36 hours since Putin faced a rebellion from his top aide Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023. Time is a serious problem: something that has to last 30 days must be built in 30 hours.

Gigantic questions remain for Ukraine and its allies as to how this ceasefire comes into effect. Can Kyiv order its forces to not fight back in self-defense? If the US is to monitor the truce, as Macron suggested, does it have the capabilities in place, in adequate quality and quantity, to study hundreds of miles of violent frontlines? Precise evidence of Moscow’s infractions will be key to helping Ukraine and Europe respond to the inevitable wave of Russian misinformation and recrimination that may accompany a truce.

The cost for Kyiv and Europe of the next month could be significant. Ukraine could lose ground as its troops soften their responses to Russian assaults during a ceasefire. The White House might emerge from the process and again swing back on its pendulum to a place where it believes Zelensky is the problem. Europe’s unity – on display remarkably today in Kyiv, and backed by over a dozen other countries from New Zealand to Canada – can only worsen from its current peak, especially if American support for Ukraine ebbs.

But the cost of doing nothing – as was the case in the Europe of the 1930s – was higher. Trump losing patience with perhaps the most complex item on his portfolio would likely be damaging for Kyiv, more than for Moscow. Putin having another two months to pick away at Kyiv’s frontlines would leave Zelensky facing another ghastly winter.

Ukraine and its European allies seek clarity from this proposal on whether Putin wants any kind of peace at all. The path they have chosen to get there is in itself unclear, and deeply fraught with potholes of Putin’s manipulation.

Listening to the heads of Europe’s five largest militaries in Kyiv Saturday, it appeared most had made their mind up that Putin does not want peace and won’t genuinely contemplate a month of it. These five leaders face a tricky few weeks of establishing that fact, and then the messy persuasion of Trump that he must take an even tougher position on Russia than his predecessor, Joe Biden.

The path ahead that Europe’s leaders appear to envisage is of a worsening of the war – where Putin violates a ceasefire, is hit with “massive sanctions,” and Europe must escalate its military backing for Ukraine. They do not appear to think the Kremlin wants the war to stop. The weeks ahead are designed, it seems, for a future in which they must prove to Trump he is being misled, and drag his White House permanently and irrefutably into their camp.

India and Pakistan agreed to an immediate ceasefire on Saturday, unexpectedly halting the worst fighting in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbors, just when their tit-for-tat strikes appeared to be spiraling out of control.

Although US President Donald Trump was the first to announce the ceasefire and claimed credit for it, India and Pakistan have offered contradictory accounts about the extent of US involvement in the agreement.

Just hours after the announcement there have been reports of violations from both sides.

Here’s what you need to know.

How did the truce come about?

Just before 8 a.m. ET, about 5 p.m. in India and Pakistan, Trump announced the ceasefire in a post on Truth Social.

“After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE,” Trump said, congratulating the leaders of both countries for “using common sense and great intelligence.”

Soon after, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that India and Pakistan had not only agreed to a ceasefire, but also “to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.” Rubio said that the ceasefire came after he and Vice President JD Vance spent the past two days speaking with senior officials from both countries.

A minute later, Pakistan confirmed the ceasefire was effective immediately. Indian confirmation came soon after.

India’s Ministry of Information said the agreement was worked out “directly between the two countries,” downplaying US involvement and contradicting Trump’s claim. The ministry also said there was “no decision” to hold further talks.

But Pakistani officials have heaped praise on Washington.

“We thank President Trump for his leadership and proactive role for peace in the region,” said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Why the differing accounts?

It should not be surprising that these bitter rivals have given contradictory accounts of how the ceasefire was reached.

India, which views itself as an ascendant superpower, has long been resistant to international mediation, whereas Pakistan, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid, tends to welcome it, analysts say.

“India has never accepted mediation in any dispute, be it India-Pakistan or India-China, or any other,” said Dr. Aparna Panda, research fellow for India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC.

“Pakistan, on the other hand, has always sought international mediation so they will praise it,” she added, saying it is “the only way it can put pressure on India to discuss and resolve the Kashmir dispute.”

The fighting before Saturday’s ceasefire was marked by claims, counterclaims and disinformation from both sides. Now that the conflict has paused, both sides are ramping up their efforts to shape perceptions of what the fighting achieved and how it ended.

What happened Saturday?

The afternoon’s ceasefire is all the more surprising given the intensity of this morning’s fighting.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Pakistan said India had launched missiles at several of its key military bases. It said the strikes spanned from sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir to a military base close to its capital, Islamabad.

In response, Pakistan said it fired back at military air bases in India. “An eye for an eye,” its military said in a statement.

Hours later, explosions were reported in Indian-administered Kashmir, including Srinagar, the region’s largest city, and in the city of Jaamu. Sharif said Pakistan had delivered “a resounding reply” to Indian aggression.

After four days of direct military strikes on the other’s territory, many in the region feared that – in the absence of meaningful international pressure – the tit-for-tat strikes would continue to escalate.

What was the trigger for the crisis?

This round of fighting began in Kashmir, a disputed region that has been a flashpoint in India-Pakistan relations since both countries gained their independence from Britain in 1947.

The two nations to emerge from the bloody partition of British India – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – both claim Kashmir in full, despite only controlling parts of it. Months after becoming independent, they fought the first of their three wars over the territory.

On April 26, gunmen opened fire on sightseers in a popular travel destination in the mountainous destination of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. At least 25 Indian citizens and one Nepali were killed in the massacre.

New Delhi immediately blamed Islamabad, accusing it of supporting “cross-border terrorism.” Pakistan has denied all involvement in the attack.

Two weeks after the Pahalgam massacre, India on Wednesday launched a series of strikes on Pakistan and the parts of Kashmir it holds, calling the attack “Operation Sindoor.”

The theater of conflict since then has been far broader than in previous rounds of fighting, with both sides striking deep into the other’s territory.

Why did the US get involved?

Just two days ago, JD Vance downplayed the potential for US influence as the India-Pakistan conflict spiralled.

“What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it,” Vance told Fox News on Thursday.

Vance’s about-face is a measure of how concerned the US – and the wider international community – became by the escalating conflict between the two nuclear powers.

Will the ceasefire hold?

Although India and Pakistan have stepped back from the brink for now, it remains to be seen whether the ceasefire will hold. Strong blasts were heard across the Srinagar in India-administered Kashmir just hours after the agreement was announced.

The India-Pakistan conflict was taking a dramatic turn for the worse, pitching the nuclear-armed neighbors into a dangerous spiral of tit-for-tat strikes.

Then, out of the blue, US President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US had brokered an end to the fighting.

On his Truth Social platform, he made the surprise announcement that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire – all the more unexpected as, just days before, Vice President JD Vance had insisted the conflict was “fundamentally, none of our business.”

Already, this was an emotionally charged conflict, sparked by the shocking terror attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last month – in which 26 people, mainly tourists, were shot dead by rampaging gunmen.

To make matters worse, in the Indian airstrikes that followed, Pakistan claimed to have shot down five Indian air force jets in what would be a stinging blow for the Indian military.

Still, the escalating attacks deep inside Indian and Pakistani territory seem to have focused minds in Washington, which has clearly pressured both sides to step back from the brink.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that he and Vance had spoken to the political and military leadership in India and Pakistan to secure agreement before the situation deteriorated further.

Just hours before the ceasefire announcement, India had struck Pakistani military bases provoking a furious retaliation from Pakistan, which launched rockets, artillery and drone strikes on dozens of locations in India, provoking growing nationalistic calls for retribution.

There are conflicting accounts of how the ceasefire was negotiated. While Islamabad praised US involvement, New Delhi downplayed it – keen to portray the ceasefire as a victory and saying that the neighbors had worked together “directly” on the truce.

Whatever the US role was exactly, the White House was frankly pushing on an open door – it is in neither India’s nor Pakistan’s interest for the conflict to continue.

The truce is also exactly the kind of quick deal Trump hoped he could broker elsewhere, such as in Ukraine, where conflict with Russia has been dragging on for nearly three and a half years.

In comparison, the intense fighting between India and Pakistan seems to be over after just three and a half days.

But this Trump truce may not herald a lasting peace.

Even a few hours into the ceasefire, reports emerged of violations in the form of explosions in Indian-administered Kashmir and allegations of ongoing cross border attacks. This may settle down as the truce takes root.

But there is a bigger problem too: the US-brokered ceasefire agreement will not go anywhere near addressing the fundamental grievances fueling the decades-long dispute over the status of Muslim-majority Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan and has a separatist, independent movement.

The latest confrontation over Kashmir may be coming to a end, but it is likely to return with a vengeance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed holding “direct talks” with Ukraine on Thursday in Istanbul, as European leaders and the United States attempt to put pressure on Moscow to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in order to bring an end to the three-year conflict.

“We would like to start immediately, already next Thursday, May 15, in Istanbul, where they were held before and where they were interrupted,” Putin said in a rare late-night televised address. He emphasized the talks should be held “without any preconditions.”

“We are set on serious negotiations with Ukraine,” Putin said, adding they are intended to “eliminate the root causes of the conflict” and “reach the establishment of a long-term, durable peace.”

The proposal came just hours after the leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland told Putin to agree to a 30-day ceasefire starting on Monday or face possible “massive sanctions,” according to French President Emmanuel Macron, on a highly symbolic visit to Kyiv.

The demand comes with the backing of the White House after a joint phone call with US President Donald Trump, the Europeans said.

Shortly after the leaders called for a ceasefire, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is “resistant to any kind of pressure.”

“Europe is actually confronting us very openly,” Peskov said, adding that Putin supports the idea of a ceasefire “in general,” but “there are lots of questions” about the recent proposal that still need answering. He did not expand on what these questions are.

Putin said Sunday he would speak with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about holding talks with Kyiv.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

It comes after US special envoy Steve Witkoff warned on Friday that if the next set of talks in Oman on Sunday were not productive, “then they won’t continue and we’ll have to take a different route.”

“The United States will ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, but also wishes for lasting peace in the Middle East, a new relationship with Iran, and for the Iranian people to reach their nations full potential,” said the US official.

Earlier Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi – who is expected to meet Witkoff on Sunday – said Tehran had received “contradictory messages” from the US as “different individuals express different views.”

The Iranian source said the American side “is basically not ready for meaningful technical and political talks,” adding that the United States gives “short and general answers” to questions, ignores “main proposals,” and “constantly changes its position” throughout the negotiations.

According to the source, this situation has led Iran to conclude that the negotiations “likely will not yield the desired outcome in sanctions relief and economic benefit.”

As a result, Tehran is “preparing for the next stage, with political, economic, and other sectors having prepared the necessary scenarios over the past month.”

The comments come after Witkoff, in an interview with Breitbart posted Friday, described the US’ expectations for the talks in some of the greatest detail to date.

“An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line. No enrichment. That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan – those are their three enrichment facilities – have to be dismantled,” Witkoff said.

Iran has said it is nonnegotiable that it be allowed to enrich uranium.

Iran has long insisted it does not want a nuclear weapon and that its program is for energy purposes.

In his interview with Breitbart, the special envoy said the talks are focused exclusively on the nuclear issue, a change from the attempts of the first Trump administration to deal widely with Iran’s aggressive actions in the region.

Police on a Japanese holiday island have arrested three Chinese nationals after thousands of protected hermit crabs were found stuffed into multiple suitcases.

The three suspects – Liao Zhibin, 24, Song Zhenhao, 26, and Guo Jiawei, 27 – were found to have 160 kilograms (353 pounds) of the live crustaceans in their possession on Wednesday, according to police on the Amami Islands, near Okinawa.

Police said a hotel worker in Amami, a city on the island of Amami Oshima, alerted environmental authorities after spotting something suspicious about the suitcases the three men had asked hotel staff to watch.

Officers later arrived at the hotel and found the spiral-shelled hermit crabs stuffed into six suitcases, according to police.

When they returned to the hotel on Wednesday, the three men were arrested for possessing the crustaceans without proper authorization, Kyodo News reported.

It’s unknown why the three men were transporting the crustaceans.

The Amami archipelago, off southwestern Kyushu and just north of Okinawa, is a popular tourist destination and known to be home to a diverse array of native plants and animals.

Five fishermen who spent 55 days adrift at sea arrived Saturday at a port in the Galapagos Islands after being rescued by a tuna boat, the Ecuadorian navy said on X.

The three Peruvians and two Colombians had been missing since mid-March and were found on May 7 by an Ecuadorian boat called Aldo.

The fishermen had reported damage to the boat’s alternator two days after setting sail from Pucusana Bay, to the south of Peru’s capital Lima, the navy said in a separate post on Friday.

The failure caused communication and navigation tools to malfunction, Ecuadorian navy Frigate Capt. Maria Fares told The Associated Press, adding that they had no power on the boat.

“They had no starter, lights and everything that a battery generates,” she said. To survive, they had to “take rusted water out of the engine (and) when a fish passed by, they caught it and parboiled it to eat.” Fares added that they also drank rain and sea water to survive.

The men are in stable condition and the navy said it is coordinating with local and foreign authorities to ensure their safe return to their respective countries.

Earlier this year, another Peruvian fisherman, 61-year-old Máximo Napa, spent 95 days at sea alone. He was also rescued by an Ecuadorian vessel and returned to Lima in mid-March to be reunited with his family.

Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli left the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City, where he had sought refuge more than a year ago after the courts upheld a money laundering sentence against him, and headed to Colombia where he has received political asylum, the government said late Saturday.

Panama’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Colombian President Gustavo Petro sent Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino a formal note saying that he had granted Martinelli asylum and that Panama had granted the former president safe passage to Colombia.

“The Republic of Colombia is a State that has historically recognized with the utmost respect, compliance, and promotion the institutions of International Law, including the asylum system within the Inter-American system,” the statement said.

Martinelli, 73, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering in July 2023 in connection with the purchase of a publishing group. Following the confirmation of that sentence, the former president sought refuge in the Nicaraguan diplomatic mission in Panama after President Daniel Ortega’s government granted him asylum. He had remained inside the embassy for more than a year.

Martinelli is a businessman and supermarket magnate who governed Panama from 2009 to 2014, a period of rapid economic growth driven by the construction of major projects such as the first metro in Central America and the expansion of the interoceanic canal. But his government was tainted by accusations of bribery and cost overruns. He was sanctioned by the United States for corruption in January 2023.

Martinelli maintains that his prosecution was politically motivated as he sought to run for a second term of office.

In 2023, he won his party’s nomination to seek the presidency again. However, he was convicted of money laundering, and after the Supreme Court denied his appeal, he was ineligible to run.

Ultimately, Martinelli supported his running mate, current President Mulino.

Nicaragua granted Martinelli political asylum in February 2024. Panama had refused to grant Nicaragua permission to move Martinelli to Nicaragua.

The Colombian government had not previously commented on the matter.

They are considered one of the world’s most dangerous, and indiscriminate, weapons. Yet five European countries have turned their backs on an international treaty on the use of landmines, citing the growing threat from Moscow.

Finland, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – which all border Russia – have made moves to pull out of the Ottawa Treaty, the agreement that bans the use of anti-personnel landmines, which are designed to kill or maim if stepped on.

The developments have alarmed campaigners, who see the reintroduction of the weapons – which have killed or disfigured tens of thousands of civilians around the world and can contaminate an area for decades after a conflict ends – as a concerning regression.

The treaty, which also bans the weapons’ production and stockpiling, was signed in 1997, and was one of a series of agreements negotiated after the Cold War to encourage global disarmament. Since then, it has been credited with significantly reducing the harm from landmines.

Responding to Finland’s decision to leave the agreement, human rights NGO Amnesty International warned that the Nordic nation was endangering civilian lives, describing it as a “disturbing step backwards.”

The decision “goes against decades of progress on eliminating the production, transfer and use of inherently indiscriminate weapons,” the NGO warned.

At the start of this year, the pact had 165 member states. But major powers, including Russia, China, India, Pakistan and the United States, never signed up to it.

In a joint statement in March, Poland and the three Baltic states announced their withdrawal, arguing for a rethink on which weapons are – and which ones are not – acceptable in the face of Russia’s aggression.

The countries said they needed to provide their armed forces with greater “flexibility and freedom of choice,” to help them bolster the defense of NATO’s eastern flank.

The following month, in April, Latvia became the first country to formally withdraw from the treaty after its parliament strongly backed the proposal, meaning that after a grace period of six months, Riga would be able to start amassing landmines again.

Also that month, Finland unveiled plans to join Latvia. Explaining the decision, Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told journalists that Russia poses a long-term danger to the whole of Europe. “Withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention will give us the possibility to prepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way,” he said.

The announcements come as U.S. President Donald Trump has doubled down on efforts to wrap up the war in Ukraine, which has stoked fears in neighboring states that Moscow could re-arm and target them instead.

Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia program at the thinktank Chatham House and author of the book “Who will Defend Europe?,” believes that if and when Russia’s grinding conflict in Ukraine does come to an end by whatever means, Moscow will be readying itself for its next target.

For Giles, the military benefits of using landmines are clear. The underground explosives, he said, can slow an invasion, either by redirecting oncoming troops to areas that are easier to defend, or by holding them up as they attempt to breach the mined areas.

They can be particularly beneficial for countries looking to defend themselves against an army with greater manpower. “They are a highly effective tool for augmenting the defensive forces of a country that’s going to be outnumbered,” he said.

He believes the five countries leaving the treaty have looked at the effectiveness of the weapons, including their use in Russia’s war on Ukraine, in deterring invading forces.

However, he stressed that the Western countries wouldn’t use landmines in the same way as Moscow’s forces, saying there were “very different design philosophies” in the manufacturing of mines and cluster munitions between countries that aren’t concerned with civilian casualties or may willingly try to cause them, and those that are trying to avoid them.

In Ukraine, extensive Russian minefields laid along Ukraine’s southern front lines significantly slowed a summer counteroffensive launched by Ukraine in 2023.

Ukraine is deemed by the United Nations to be the most heavily mined country in the world. In its most recent projections, Ukraine’s government estimates that Moscow’s forces have littered 174,000 square kilometers (65,637 square miles) of Ukraine’s territory with landmines and explosive remnants.

This means Ukrainian civilians, particularly those who have returned to areas previously on the front lines of the fighting, are faced with an ever-present risk of death.

“The large-scale contamination of land by explosive ordnance has created an ‘invisible threat’ in people’s minds,” Humanity & Inclusion, an international charity helping those affected by poverty, conflict, and disaster, warned in a February report on the use of landmines in Ukraine. “As a result, people’s movements are extremely reduced or restricted, they can no longer cultivate their land and their social, economic, or professional activities are hindered.”

According to findings from Human Rights Watch published in 2023, Ukraine has also used antipersonnel landmines during the conflict and has received them from the US, despite Kyiv being a signatory of the 1997 ban.

In comparison, Finland, Poland and the Baltic nations say they would remain committed to their humanitarian principles when using the explosives, despite withdrawing from the ban.

When announcing its plans to leave the Ottawa Treaty, Helsinki stressed it would use the weapons in a humane manner, with the country’s president Alexander Stubb writing on X, “Finland is committed to its international obligations on the responsible use of mines.”

While the responsible use of landmines is a complex issue, measures to reduce civilian harm can include making precise records of minefields and their locations, educating communities to their dangers and the clearance or neutralization of the weapons once the conflict is over.

‘Disturbing step backwards’

Despite such pledges of responsibility, the move away from the Ottawa Treaty has left campaigners horrified.

Landmines have killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians across the world and continue to cause harm. In its 2024 report, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor found that at least 5,757 people were killed and wounded by mines and explosive remnants of war across the globe in 2023, with civilians making up 84% of that number.

Alma Taslidžan, from Bosnia, was displaced from her homeland during the war of the early 90s, only to return with her family to a country laced with landmines – a contamination issue she says plagues the country to this day.

Now working for disability charity Humanity & Inclusion, she described the five countries’ decision to pull out of the treaty as “absolute nonsense” and “the most horrible thing that could happen in the life of a treaty.”

She continued, “We are surprised that such advanced militaries like the Finnish, like the Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, would consider putting this hugely indiscriminate weapon in their military strategy, and what is worse, putting it in their land.”

Yet, for some, the new, precarious security reality that Europe is facing means that previous red lines are now up for discussion.

This is the case for Giles, who sees the latest developments as a recognition from these countries that treaties on landmines were “an act of idealism which has proven to be over-optimistic by developments in the world since then.”