Why Finland Wants 1 Million Landmines Again

Finland once destroyed its anti-personnel mines for about 22 cents each. Now it wants a million new ones. Why would a country that signed the landmine ban build mines again? We go back to the Winter War of 1939, when a nation of under four million held off the Red Army, the losses of 1940 and 1944 that took its Arctic coast, the Cold War years of Finlandization, and then the turn: NATO in 2023, a sealed border, cut Baltic cables, and Ukraine's minefields. Then the cost: the civilians mines keep killing long after wars end. ⏱️ Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:54 A small country next to a giant 1:41 The Winter War 4:05 Mines in the north 5:03 The country that never demobilised 6:09 Giving them up 6:50 The border closes 8:09 Why mines 9:24 The cost 📚 Key sources (full list in the pinned comment) Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1... The War Zone: https://www.twz.com/news-features/fin... Ruotuväki (Finnish Defence Forces): https://ruotuvaki.fi/-/kotimainen-mii... Finnish Government: https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/236553... Landmine Monitor: https://the-monitor.org/country-profi... ICBL: https://icblcmc.org/our-impact/nobel-... Defence24: https://defence24.pl/sily-zbrojne/woj... Euronews: https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/09/f... Finnish Government: https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/situatio... The Record: https://therecord.media/finland-appea... Finnish Defence Forces: https://puolustusvoimat.fi/en/-/finni... Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerh... 🔔 Subscribe:    / @behindthemapfiles   🎵 Music: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — Lightless Dawn, Floating Cities. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 — http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... 🎞️ Footage: US Army, US Marine Corps (DVIDS, public domain), the 1940 Soviet newsreel "The Mannerheim Line" (public domain), Polygoon newsreel (public domain), State Emergency Service and National Police of Ukraine (CC BY 4.0), Pexels, Wikimedia Commons contributors (CC BY / CC BY-SA / CC0) 🛰️ Satellite imagery: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics. Terrain: Mapzen / AWS Terrain Tiles. Land cover: NASA MODIS (GIBS). Borders and roads: Natural Earth; 1938 border: historical-basemaps (approx.).