One core principle behind determining whether the use of a weapon is a war crime is seeing if it can be used discriminately, i.e., if it can be targeted. So for example, the use of guns (though awful) is not a war crime, because using it requires you to point it at something and pull the trigger. You are in control of whether you shoot an enemy who is actively engaging, an enemy who is retreating, a field medic, a journalist reporting on the scene, a civilian who was not able to flee the area. With for example mustard gas, you cannot make this choice, and that's one of the two major reasons why the use of mustard gas is a war crime.

Even if you build in a self destruction mechanism to landmines(1), this indiscriminate nature remains.

On top of that, you mention something about peppering cities with land mines not being ok (and it wouldn't be), but I'm not convinced that anyone's doing that. And still civilians make up 90% of the victims.

Of course, there's another thing playing into that 90% figure, which is that, by and large, mines are not very effective against military tartgets because they have ample means to dispose of them. Given the fact that our target here is Russia, and not some poorly funded guerilla outfit, I think this should be taken into consideration.

Pairing their war crimey nature and their low efficacy (2), I personally cannot get behind withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty.

There is much more to say about this, and much more has been said about this. I would recommend giving

https://www.humanity-inclusion.org.uk/en/landmines-can-no-lo...

a skim. They give alternative, more effective, less inhumane, solutions to the problems that mines try (and largely fail) to solve.

(1) Which is ultimately a bit of a hypothetical exercise, because the nations that left the treaty, well, left the treaty. They didn't propose an amendment allowing for temporary mines, they left the treaty. And on top of that the failure rate for such smart mines is like 20%. You get 1/5th of a war crime I guess.

(2) Earlier I said something to the effect of "I'm sure they're effective". At the time I hadn't read up on the actual effectiveness of mines, because to me, the effectiveness of a method plays no role in whether it should be allowed in combat. I've since read up on that part too, and I'm reasonably convinced they're not very effective in our current context.