US to give antipersonnel mines to Ukraine to help slow the Russian advance

KYIV, Ukraine — (AP) — The Biden administration said Wednesday that it will give Ukraine antipersonnel land mines to help it slow Russia's battlefield advances, marking the second major shift on U.S. military support for Kyiv in days.

After allowing Ukraine to use longer-range American missiles to launch strikes deeper into Russia, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the shift in Washington's policy on antipersonnel land mines for Ukraine was needed to counter changing Russian tactics.

The war, which reached its 1,000-day milestone on Tuesday, has largely been going Russia's way. Moscow's bigger army is slowly pushing Ukraine's outnumbered forces backward in the eastern Donetsk region, while Ukrainian civilians are being maimed and killed by Russian drones and missiles often fired from inside Russia.

Ground troops are leading the Russian battlefield advance, rather than forces more protected in armored carriers, so Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians,” Austin said during a trip to Laos.

The announcement comes two months before Donald Trump returns to the White House. Trump has pledged to swiftly end the war and has criticized the amount the U.S. has spent on supporting Ukraine. Officials from Joe Biden’s administration say they are determined to help Ukraine as much as possible before he leaves office.

The back-to-back announcements about helping Ukraine's military — along with unconfirmed reports Wednesday of Ukraine firing a certain British cruise missile at Russia for the first time — were likely to vex Moscow.

The U.S. and some other Western embassies in Kyiv closed for the day Wednesday in response to the threat of a major Russian aerial attack on the Ukrainian capital.

Humanitarian groups have long criticized the use of antipersonnel land mines because they present a lingering threat to civilians. Amnesty International called the U.S. decision “reckless” and a “deeply disappointing setback." And Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, called it “very problematic” because Ukraine is a signatory to an international convention opposing the use of land mines.

Austin pointed out that Ukraine already makes its own antipersonnel land mines, and that the U.S. has been providing Ukraine with anti-tank mines. He also tried to allay concerns about the new mines the U.S. is giving Kyiv, saying they are not persistent, meaning troops can control when they would self-detonate.

“That makes it far more safer eventually than the things that they are creating on their own,” Austin said.

The mines are are electrically fused and powered by batteries, so that when the battery runs out, they won’t detonate. They can become inert in anywhere from four hours to two weeks.

Russia already uses land mines in Ukraine, but those don't become inert over time.

The United States also sought commitments from the Ukrainians on the use of the mines to limit harm to innocent civilians, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Ukraine would use the mines in its own country and would not put them in civilian populated areas.

The war has taken on a growing international dimension with the arrival of North Korean troops to help Russia on the battlefield — a development that U.S. officials said prompted Biden's policy shift on allowing Ukraine to fire longer-range U.S. missiles into Russia and that angered the Kremlin.

Britain had been quietly pressing the U.S. to ease restrictions on how Western-supplied missiles are used. And on Wednesday, unconfirmed news reports said Ukraine had fired British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles at Russia for the first time. British and Ukrainian officials didn't confirm the reports.

Officials with France's military and president's office, meanwhile, declined to say whether Ukraine is using French long-range SCALP missiles to strike targets in Russia, citing France's military secrecy policy. French President Emmanuel Macron has been pushing for such a step for months.

After the Biden administration allowed Ukraine to attack Russia with longer-range U.S. missiles, Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for using his nuclear arsenal, with the new doctrine announced Tuesday permitting a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.

That could potentially include Ukrainian attacks backed by the U.S.

The American diplomatic mission in Kyiv said Wednesday that it had received a warning about a potentially significant Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital and was staying closed for the day. It anticipated a quick return to regular operations. The Spanish, Italian and Greek embassies also closed for the day, but the U.K. government and France said that their embassies remained open.

Western leaders dismissed the Russian reaction to the U.S. missile decision as an attempt to deter Ukraine's allies from providing further support to Kyiv, but the escalating tension weighed on stock markets after Ukraine used American-made ATACMS longer-range missiles for the first time to strike a target inside Russia.

Western and Ukrainian officials say Russia been stockpiling powerful long-range missiles, possibly in an upcoming effort to crush the Ukrainian power grid as winter approaches.

Military analysts say the U.S. decision on the range over which American-made missiles can be used isn't expected to be a game-changer in the war, but it could help weaken the Russian war effort, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.

“Ukrainian long-range strikes against military objects within Russia’s rear are crucial for degrading Russian military capabilities throughout the theater," it said.

Meanwhile, North Korea recently supplied additional artillery systems to Russia, according to South Korea. It said that North Korean soldiers were assigned to Russia's marine and airborne forces units and some of them have already begun fighting alongside the Russians on the front lines.

Ukraine struck a factory in Russia’s Belgorod region that makes cargo drones for the armed forces in an overnight attack, according to Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the counter-disinformation branch of Ukraine’s Security Council.

He also claimed Ukraine hit an arsenal in Russia’s Novgorod region, near the town of Kotovo, located about 680 kilometers (420 miles) behind the Ukrainian border. The arsenal stored artillery ammunition and various types of missiles, he said.

It wasn't possible to independently verify the claims.

___

Baldor reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Tara Copp in Washington, Jill Lawless in London and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

___

Follow the AP's coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.