Internationally banned MON-50 and MON-90 mines used by the Ukrainian forces were discovered in Mariupol, RT’s Murad Gazdiev reported on Sunday. In 1999, Kiev joined the 1997 Ottawa Convention, which bans use of such devices.
They were found inside the Ilyich steel mill. Russian troops and the Donbass forces expelled “Ukrainian nationalists” from the facility on Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
“This was set up here with a tripwire,” Gazdiev said, standing next to one of the explosive devices that was lying on the floor. More mines were found in wooden crates nearby.
“Ukraine claimed to have destroyed these anti-personnel mines in accordance with the international treaties it had signed. As you can see – it hadn’t. This does seem to show that Ukraine, by all appearances, lied.”
Kiev has not commented on the matter.
In 2020, Igor Lossovky, Ukraine’s deputy envoy to the OSCE, said that Kiev was in the process of destroying the mine arsenal it inherited from Soviet times. He claimed that the remaining mines were being “stored under strict national and international control,” and not used by the Ukrainian Army.
Ukrainian officials and US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch accused Russia of using MON-90 and other anti-personnel mines in Ukraine this month. Neither Russia nor the US, however, is party to the Ottawa Convention.
Mariupol is largely controlled by Russian and Donbass troops, who are facing resistance by small pockets of Ukrainian forces.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.