image2 04.04.2017

Belarus's 3.4 million stockpile of PFM-1 anti-personnel mines destroyed with EU support

Belarus's last remaining seventy PFM-1 landmines will be destroyed at the Belarusian army's Engineering Ammunition Base near Rečyca, Homieĺ region, on 5 April 2017.

The destruction of the last remaining of PFM-1 landmines will be the highlight of a ceremony to mark the completion of an EU-funded project to help Belarus get rid of some of the most hazardous liquid-containing cluster munitions.

Belarus started destroying its stockpile of landmines after acceding to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, informally known as the Ottawa Treaty, in 2003.

The country had a stockpile of approximately 3.4 million Soviet-era PFM-1 anti-personnel landmines. The country asked for international technical and financial support toward their safe destruction.

In 2011, the European Union awarded a contract worth 3.9 million euros to EXPAL, a Spanish company that designed and produced a unique mobile plant with a cold detonation chamber.  The technology, developed specially for the destruction of such liquid-containing ammunition, allows safe treatment of chemical components and full recovery of scrap. The project has been implemented in full compliance with European and Belarusian safety and environmental standards.

Major General Voinov, Head of International Military Cooperation Department and Assistant Minister of Defence for Military Policy of the Republic of Belarus, will host the closing ceremony. Andrea Wiktorin, head of the Delegation of the European Union to Belarus, heads of mission of EU Member States in Belarus, representatives of the Belarusian ministry of foreign affairs, and Admiral (Ret.) Francisco Torrente, Chairman of the Board of Directors of EXPAL, the implementer of the project, will be in attendance.