The Biden administration has approved sending anti-personnel mines to Ukraine for the first time in another major policy shift, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed on Wednesday.
The decision comes just days after the US gave Ukraine permission to fire long-range US missiles at targets in Russia, a shift that only occurred after months of lobbying from Kyiv.
The US intends for Kyiv to use the anti-personnel mines in the eastern part of the country, US officials said, where Russian troops have made slow and steady progress against Ukrainian defensive lines. The grinding battle has cost Moscow tremendously, with Ukraine claiming Russia suffered its highest number of casualties this week. But Russia’s unrelenting pressure, coupled with shortages in Ukrainian manpower and ammunition, has allowed the Russian military to gradually seize more territory.
Austin told reporters on Wednesday that the decision was motivated by Russia’s changing tactics on the frontlines.
“Because the Russians have been so unsuccessful in the way that they have been fighting, they’ve kind of changed their tactics a bit,” Austin told reporters in Laos.
“They don’t lead with their mechanized forces anymore. They lead with dismounted forces who are able to close and do things to kind of pave the way for mechanized forces,” he explained.
Austin said Ukraine’s military needs “things that can help slow down that effort.”
The US expects Ukraine to use these anti-personnel mines to bolster defensive lines within sovereign Ukrainian territory, not as an offensive capability in Russia. The US has also sought assurances that Ukraine will try to limit the risk to civilians from the mines.
The administration’s decision was first reported by the Washington Post.
Since the early days of the war, the US has provided Ukraine with anti-tank mines to blunt Russia’s numerical superiority in armored vehicles. But until now, the Biden administration had not provided Ukraine with anti-personnel mines over concerns about the enduring danger they may pose. Human rights groups have long criticized the use of anti-personnel mines because they can kill indiscriminately and can remain armed for years after the conflict in which they were initially used has ended.
In June 2022 – four months after the start of the war in Ukraine – the Biden administration pledged to limit the use of anti-personnel mines. In announcing the decision, which was a reversal from the earlier Trump administration, the White House said there was a “need to curtail the use of (anti-personnel mines) worldwide.” The US said that it would no longer develop or export anti-personnel mines and would work to destroy all of its existing stockpiles. (The one exception to the policy was South Korea.)
The announcement of anti-personnel mines for Ukraine, especially with only weeks left in the Biden administration, is a sudden change on what had been a long-standing policy.
The type of mines the US provides to Ukraine will be “non-persistent,” according to the officials, meaning they have an internal mechanism to shorten the lifespan of the trigger. The mines are designed to become inert after a set period of time ranging from as little as four hours to two weeks, the officials said. The mines use an electrical fuse that requires a battery, and the mine becomes inert when the battery runs out.
Russia has deployed anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines since the earliest days of the war. As Russian forces advanced into Ukraine and established their own defensive lines, they established minefields to slow any Ukraine counterattack. Last summer, as Ukrainian forces mounted an ultimately unsuccessful counteroffensive, one Ukrainian official described the density of Russian mines as “insane.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.