NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia plan to withdraw from the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel landmines due to the military threat from their neighbour Russia, the four countries said on Tuesday.

Quitting the 1997 treaty, which has been ratified or acceded to by more than 160 nations, will allow Poland and the three Baltic countries to start stockpiling and using landmines again.

"Military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased," the countries' defence ministers said in a joint statement.

"With this decision we are sending a clear message: our countries are prepared and can use every necessary measure to defend our security needs."

The planned withdrawal was done to allow the effective protection of the region's borders, Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovile Sakaliene said in a separate statement. All four countries share borders with Russia. Poland, Lithuania and Latvia also share borders with Moscow's ally Belarus.

The announcement comes as Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of concluding a 30-day ceasefire and may move towards a more permanent end to the three-year-old conflict sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Poland and the Baltics are concerned that an end to the war in Ukraine could lead Russia to re-arm and target them instead. All four were under Moscow's dominion during the Cold War.

GLOBAL DISARMAMENT

The 1997 Ottawa Convention was one of a series of international agreements concluded after the end of the Cold War to encourage global disarmament. Anti-landmine campaigners won the Nobel Peace Prize that same year. Mines have killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians across the globe, many of them long after conflicts have ended.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was "gravely concerned" by the move.

"Reintroducing these appalling weapons would be a deeply troubling step backward," Cordula Droege, ICRC's Chief Legal Officer, told Reuters. "Anti-personnel mines have limited military utility but devastating humanitarian consequences."

Russia, the United States, China, India and Israel are among the countries who have not signed or ratified it.

In 2008, the Convention on Cluster Munitions - explosive weapons that release smaller submunitions over a vast area - was adopted. Like landmines, they do not discriminate between combatants and civilians.

The United States, which did not sign that convention, in 2023 transferred cluster munitions to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia.