Russia Reportedly Blocks Ukrainian Evacuation Route With Air-Dropped ‘Butterfly Mines’

Early on in the invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian officials claimed that the Russians were using PFM-1 air-dropped anti-personnel mines. Also known as ‘butterfly mines,’ ‘petals,’ ‘green parrots,’ or even ‘Soviet toys of death’ these small plastic munitions, each weighing less than two ounces, are scattered by the thousand over a wide area. They are now reported to have been dropped to block evacuation routes out of Mariupol. Surprisingly enough, butterfly mines have their origin in the U.S.; these munitions originally designed to stop supply convoys are now known for maiming children.

The PFM-1 does not look like a mine. It is plastic, five inches across and an inch high, with asymmetric wings to glide to the ground like a sycamore seed without a parachute. Inside the soft plastic skin is a detonator and a quantity of liquid explosive. The detonator is triggered by cumulative deformation of the plastic skin: either a single event such as a vehicle running over it, or a series of smaller events such as handling.

The mines come in several colors, including the bright green version which gave it the ‘green parrot’ nickname. Lying by the road, it might be a toy bird or airplane. In Afghanistan, where literally millions were dropped, they were often picked up by children.

“In Afghanistan my co-workers and I were told several times that a child had taken the butterfly — or “green parrot,” as the Afghans call it — and played with it for hours with friends before any explosion occurred,” wrote Dr Gino Strada, a surgeon with the International Committee of the Red Cross who has treated mine victims in Afghanistan, Cambodia and northern Iraq, in a piece for PBS.

The small quantity of explosive and lack of shrapnel means the victim usually survives.

“In less severe cases, only two or three fingers are destroyed. Very often the blast does further harm to the chest and the face. Injuries to one or both eyes are very common, producing partial or complete blindness,” writes Strada.

There is a popular myth that the butterfly mine was deliberately designed to attract children. This is not the case, but as Strada notes: “the shape of the PFM-1 is dictated by function, but the fact remains that it is attractive to children.” (my emphasis)

So where did this design come from, and what is the military rationale for a small mine which maims rather than killing? The answer lies back in the Vietnam War, where they were used not in Vietnam itself but in Laos in an operation codenamed Igloo White which ran from 1968 to 1973.

The aim of Igloo White was to stop supplies reaching Viet Cong, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail without moving troops into Laos which would have extended the war, by means of what was described as an ‘air supported barrier.’ The program involved air-dropped sensors to detect vehicles crossing the border with a mix of acoustic, seismic and magnetic devices. When vehicle movement was located, the area was saturated with air-dropped mines. Several types of mine were developed for this mission, including the BLU-43 and BLU-44 ‘Dragontooth’ – plastic mines filled with a small quantity of liquid explosive. (The only difference between them was that the BLU-43 was supposed to disarm itself after 24 hours, but this was not reliable).

A hundred and twenty Dragontooth mines were packed into a cluster container, forty of these containers made up a CBU-28/A cluster bomb , so each bombs scattered 4,800 mines. Each F-4C Phantom delivered several such bombs on a sortie, and millions of the mines were dropped. They are still being found and destroyed in Laos.

While some sources claim that the mines were intended to damage truck tires, others contradict this. A Major Anderson told a hearing of the Senate Committee on the Armed Services: “It is purely antipersonnel. If a person steps on it, it could blow his foot off. If a truck rolls over it, it won’t blow the tire.” Anderson said the small mines were a deterrent used to prevent the enemy from removing the larger anti-vehicle lines.

The Russians retrieved and reverse-engineered BLU-43s from Southeast Asia to create their own PFM-1 butterfly mine. Their version is packed into cassettes of 72 mines and delivered by aircraft or helicopters; there are also versions delivered by rocket warheads. The Russians used the air-dropped versions in their attempt to close mountain passes in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in efforts to close down Mujahideen supply lines.

Now Russia is using them in Ukraine. While some might claim that the there is a military objective to prevent besieged cities like Mariupol receiving ammunition and other materiel, the fact that these are specifically antipersonnel mines more indicates that they are being used deliberately to stop the movement of refugees on foot attempting to leave the city.

Antipersonnel mines are controlled by the Ottawa Convention, although Russia, like the U.S., is not a signatory to this convention. International Humanitarian Law still applies though, and the use of such mines in populated areas, along with the use of cluster bombs and artillery fire against clearly civilian buildings will certainly come to the attention of war crimes investigators after the war.