The U.S. is planning to send Ukraine antipersonnel land mines to help Kyiv’s forces fend off the advance of Russian ground troops, U.S. defense chief Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.
The decision is the second U.S. policy reversal in recent days after President Joe Biden, in the last two months of his White House tenure, switched his stance and said Ukraine is now free to launch Washington-supplied, long-range missiles deeper into Russia.
Ukraine quickly targeted munitions warehouses with its first attack on Tuesday.
Austin, speaking to reporters traveling with him on a trip to Laos, said allowing the shipment of the U.S. landmines to Ukraine became necessary because of changing battlefield tactics by Moscow’s forces.
The Pentagon chief said Russian ground troops are leading the movement on the battlefield, rather than forces protected by armored carriers, so Ukraine has "a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians."
Moscow has captured more territory in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks.
Austin said the land mines that the U.S. will provide can be controlled for self-activation and self-detonation. A U.S. official said late Tuesday the United States sought commitments from Ukraine on how it will use the antipersonnel mines, with the expectation they will be deployed only on Ukrainian territory in areas where Ukrainian civilians are not living.
The official also pointed to the functioning of the mines, which require a battery for operation and will not detonate once the battery runs out after a period of a few hours to a few weeks.
Russia, like the U.S., did not sign the United Nations convention on the prohibition of anti-personnel mines, but Ukraine did, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted on Wednesday.
Russia has deployed at least 13 types of land mines in Ukraine, according to Human Rights Watch, and uses them extensively in territory it has captured from Ukraine, according to The Washington Post.
The U.S. on Wednesday also said it is sending another $275 million package of munitions to Kyiv, including arms for rocket systems, artillery and anti-tank weapons. It is the 70th such shipment since August 2021.
The changing policies and additional arms supply appear to be an effort by Biden and his defense team to shore up Ukraine’s war effort before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office January 20.
Trump has been a skeptic of continuing U.S. support for Ukraine, claiming he will have the war ended before he even takes office, but not offering any details on how he would do so.
Meanwhile, with fighting in the 1,000-day war raging on, the U.S., Italy and Greece closed their embassies in Kyiv on Wednesday, with the American delegation saying it had received a warning of a potentially significant Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital in response to Biden’s decision to allow Kyiv’s use of the long-range U.S. missiles. Britain kept its embassy open.
Russia and Ukraine each carried out widespread drone attacks Wednesday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it shot down about 50 Ukrainian drones, with intercepts taking place over the Novgorad, Kursk, Oryol, Belgorod, Tula, Tver, Bryansk, Moscow and Smolensk regions.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia attacked with 122 drones, with Ukrainian air defenses shooting down 56 of them. The aerial attacks targeted Ukraine’s Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Khmelnytksyi, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr regions.
Also on Wednesday, an 11-year-old boy was killed instantly in his yard and his 13-year-old sister was injured in a Russian attack with cluster munitions in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. A 63-year-old man was also injured in the incident.
Carla Babb contributed to this report.
