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.”

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.

Ukraine’s Western allies including the US are threatening to slap Russia with more sanctions if Moscow fails to sign up to the 30-day truce in Ukraine proposed by the United States.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday added the threat of additional sanctions from the US and “its partners” to his latest call for an “unconditional ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine that Moscow has repeatedly rejected. A key meeting of leaders of Ukraine’s European allies is expected in Kyiv on Saturday in a further sign of growing pressure on Russia.

Trump has made ending the war in Ukraine one of his priorities and he has invested much effort into trying to get Russian President Vladimir Putin on board. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff went to Russia four times to meet with Putin and there have been several other high-level meetings between US and Russian officials since Trump returned to the White House in January.

But despite offering some previously unthinkable concessions to Russia, the Trump administration has not been able to get Russia to agree to the limited ceasefire proposal, intended as opening a path towards a permanent truce.

Now it seems that Trump is rapidly losing his patience with Putin over this stalling. And the latest move by Trump marks another shift in US stance on the conflict, which had at times been sympathetic to Kremlin.

Just days ago, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened the US would walk away from the talks if there is no progress. Instead, the US is now leading Ukraine’s other Western allies in trying to put more pressure on Russia.

European leaders back Trump’s proposal

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky hinted on Friday that an announcement outlining details of the ceasefire proposal is expected as early as on Saturday.

He said that leaders of the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” – a group of Western nations that have pledged to help defend Ukraine against Russia – will meet in Kyiv on Saturday, without giving any details of who would be attending the summit.

Trump spoke to Zelensky and a number of European leaders about the ceasefire proposal and sanctions on Thursday.

The French President Emmanuel Macron said he spoke with Trump “several times” on Thursday, “commending his strong call for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.”

“We must all work towards this goal without delay, false pretenses, or dilatory tactics. Ukraine has already expressed its support for such a ceasefire nearly two months ago. I now expect Russia to do the same,” Macron said on X.

Macron added that if Russia fails to accept the proposal, France was “ready to respond firmly, together with all Europeans and in close coordination with the United States.”

Speaking on Friday alongside the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Macron confirmed there would be “a meeting, partly virtual and partly in-person” in Kyiv on Saturday.

Trump also spoke to the leaders of 10 countries northern European countries that form the security alliance known as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) on Thursday. The leaders of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Finland called both Trump and Zelensky during their dinner at a summit in Oslo, according to statements from the governments of several of the countries represented at the meeting.

“Our message to both presidents was that we are committed to a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. We also conveyed our full support for the proposal for a 30 days ceasefire and continued European and US commitment to the peace process,” Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a statement on X.

On Friday, just as Putin hosted number of Kremlin-friendly world leaders, including the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, at a pompous military parade in Moscow, Ukraine’s European allies showed their support for Kyiv by sending top level delegations to a meeting in Ukraine.

Dozens of foreign delegations were in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Friday to endorse the ceasefire proposal and the establishment of a special tribunal to investigate crimes of aggression against Ukraine.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Germany’s new Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, the French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and dozens of top diplomats from other European countries were among those attending.

A diver died on Friday during preliminary operations to recover British tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s superyacht from the waters off the coast of northern Sicily, local police said.

The 56-meter-long (184-foot) Bayesian was moored off the small port of Porticello, near Palermo, in August last year when it was likely hit by a downburst, a very strong downward wind, killing seven people, including Lynch and his daughter Hannah.

The accident happened on Friday happened while the diver was underwater in Porticello, police said, adding that the precise cause of death was still unknown.

The attempt to lift the yacht off the sea bed is expected later this month and should help shed light on how a supposedly unsinkable vessel disappeared into the sea.

Italian news agencies reported that the diver was a 39-year-old Dutch national who worked for the Dutch specialist salvage company Hebo Maritiemservice.

Hebo was not immediately available for comment.

In the southern Philippine city of Davao, a spirited mayoral election campaign is in full swing, with candidates and their supporters out canvassing for votes.

But one of the leading contenders is conspicuously absent from the stump. Instead he’s 7,000 miles away, languishing in the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands.

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is awaiting trial at The Hague for crimes against humanity, over a brutal war on drug dealers that killed possibly thousands of people, including many innocents and bystanders, with barely any kind of due process.

None of this affects the 80-year-old’s eligibility for the role of mayor of Davao – a job he held, on and off, for two decades. Under Philippine election law, only a criminal conviction in a local court can keep a candidate off the ballot.

Duterte could well win Monday’s election, thanks to his enduring popularity in the region, where many credit his two-decade iron grip with tightening up law and order, before he took his brutal zero-tolerance policy nationwide as president from 2016 to 2022.

“I grew up here all my life and when I was younger it was very dangerous, killings and fighting everywhere,” said Ian Baldoza, 46, a native of Davao who remains a loyal Duterte supporter.

“But as I grew older, I started to understand that those who were killed were drug addicts, dealers and troublemakers.”

Many Davao voters feel similarly, said Cleve Arguelles, a political scientist and head of polling firm WR Numero.

“His ICC arrest doesn’t really shake their core of who Duterte is but rather, paradoxically, it only reinforces what Duterte stands for,” he said.

Baldoza, the Duterte voter, said he witnessed neighbors killed by hitmen under Duterte’s drug war, yet his Facebook profile is full of pro-Duterte posts.

“We’re not looking for a saint, we’re looking for a leader with political will, and the Duterte family has that, especially in the patriarch,” he said.

While he has not commented publicly on the race, Duterte’s daughter Sara, the Philippine vice president, thanked supporters on her father’s behalf at a rally on Thursday.

“President Rodrigo Duterte thanks you all for your love, your continued support, and your prayers that he will one day be brought back to our country,” she told a crowd in the capital Manila, under heavy rain.

Thousands of local posts are up for grabs in the midterm elections across the archipelago nation of about 120 million people, ranging from district councilors and mayors all the way up to legislators.

Three generations of the Duterte clan are fighting elections. Duterte’s son Sebastian, the incumbent Davao mayor, will be his father’s running mate, while his other son, Paolo, is seeking re-election to the national congress. Two of Paolo’s sons are running for local council seats.

While his popularity seems impervious to decline, Duterte is not politically immortal. His old age and frail health also raise questions on the succession for the dynasty, which has not been as solid as it once was, said Ramon Beleno, a political analyst and former professor from Ateneo de Davao University, who has observed elections in the Duterte clan’s bailiwick for more than a decade.

“The people of Davao have this perspective that a political dynasty is OK if it’s working,” Beleno said.

“But it’s only working as long as the patriarch, the person who established the political dynasty, is still strong.”

Opposition camps, in the elder Duterte’s absence from the country, are re-emerging across Davao, according to Beleno.

Among them are descendants of the late former national House speaker Prospero Nograles, reigniting a decades-old family rivalry that typifies the nation’s clan-tinged politics.

Karlo Nograles is running against Rodrigo Duterte for the mayoralty while his sister, Margarita, a lawyer and rising TikTok influencer, is challenging Paolo.

Scandal-hit political dynasty

And cracks in the Duterte family name are beginning to show.

Vice President Sara Duterte is in a long-running feud with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and faces calls for her impeachment for alleged corruption, which she denies.

“In the past months my name and my family name has been dragged through the mud,” she said at the recent rally.

“I have repeatedly said this before, and I will say it again now – I am not the problem of this country. The Dutertes are not the problem of the Philippines,” she said, in a vailed dig at the incumbent Marcos administration, the family’s allies turned enemies.

Marcos Jr. hails from perhaps the most famous political family in the nation – he is the son of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Paolo Duterte and his bodyguards were recently embroiled in a nightclub brawl, prompting a businessman to file a complaint against him. He said in a video statement that the clip of the melee circulating on social media was “taken a very long time ago.”

If Duterte wins the mayoral election, he can still be sworn in by proxy or in absentia – possibly by a Zoom call, if the ICC allows it, according to political scientist and pollster Arguelles. His day-to-day duties would be delegated to the vice mayor.

But if Rodrigo Duterte is not allowed to be sworn in virtually, the runner-up – projected to be Karlo Nograles – would ascend to the seat.

Duterte ran the Philippines for six turbulent years, during which his brutal crackdown on drugs – which he openly boasted about – killed many young men from impoverished shanty towns, shot by police and rogue gunmen.

According to police data, 6,000 people were killed – but rights groups say the death toll could be as high as 30,000.

Duterte’s tough approach on drugs prompted strong criticism from opposition lawmakers who launched a probe into the killings. Duterte in turn jailed his fiercest opponent and accused some news media and rights activists as traitors and conspirators.

The ICC has set his next hearing for September 23.

The leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland have arrived in Kyiv for meetings with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, a symbol of a united European position to publicly pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Friedrich Merz, the new German Chancellor, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk arrived together Saturday morning at Kyiv’s main railway station, where they were met by Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak.

The meetings are a sign of a renewed diplomatic urgency aimed at achieving a ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, which is grinding on despite US efforts to broker peace.

“There is much work to be done and many issues to discuss. This war must be ended with a just peace. Moscow must be forced to agree to a ceasefire,” Yermak wrote on his Telegram channel.

The first stop for the European leaders was Kyiv’s Independence Square where they stood to honor fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukraine, supported by the Europeans, has been calling for an immediate unconditional 30-day ceasefire, something that US President Donald Trump is also demanding.

Russia has so far refused to commit, saying it supports the idea of a 30-day ceasefire in principle but insists there are what it calls “nuances” that need addressing first.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in an interview with ABC News on Saturday suggested that one of these “nuances” was putting a halt to the supply of US and European weapons to Ukraine.

Putin has often spoken about the need to address what he calls “root causes” – which are taken to mean, among others, the eastward expansion of NATO.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump wrote that “if the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions,” adding to a sense he is growing frustrated with Russian stalling.

The inauguration of Trump in January ushered in a complete change in the US’ diplomatic focus on the war, with Ukraine and key allies fearful of a significant tilt in US policy towards Moscow.

European leaders have convened a series of meetings in response, aimed both at showing the US that Europe can do more to support Ukraine militarily, as well as providing a single voice urging the US president not to take Russia’s side in the war.

“A just and lasting peace begins with a full and unconditional ceasefire. That is the proposal we are advancing with the United States,” French President Macron wrote on his X account Saturday morning.

“Ukraine accepted [the ceasefire proposal] on March 11. Russia, however, delays, sets preconditions, plays for time, and continues its war of invasion. If Moscow continues to obstruct, we will step up the pressure—together, as Europeans and in close coordination with the United States. We welcome President Trump’s call to move forward in this direction,” Macron added.