The Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use anti-personnel land mines to mitigate Russia’s battlefield progress, undoing a policy the president had previously set at the beginning of his term.
A U.S. official confirmed the U.S. will "soon supply Ukraine with non-persistent anti-personnel land mines (APLs)."
"These mines are designed to rapidly blunt advances by ground forces, significantly enhancing Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, particularly in the east, when combined with other U.S.-supplied munitions," the official said.
The U.S. has already supplied Ukraine with anti-tank mines for use against Russia. But in 2022, President Biden reversed a Trump administration policy that had allowed for the use of APLs, returning to an Obama-era policy that had banned their use except in South Korea.
Russia has already been using land mines in Ukraine. Anti-personnel land mines have faced pushback from activists, human rights and arms control groups because they can linger for years after a conflict has ended and pose a threat to civilians.
There was similar pushback in 2023, when Biden approved cluster munitions for Ukraine. Those munitions can also remain on fields and across towns long after the war.
The U.S. official said that Washington has "secured commitments from Ukraine regarding the responsible use of these mines to minimize risks to civilians."
"These mines are intended for use on Ukraine's sovereign territory, and Ukraine has committed to avoiding deployment in areas populated with its own civilians," they said. "Unlike the thousands of landmines that Russia has indiscriminately employed in eastern Ukraine, U.S. APLs are non-persistent."
The official noted that they become inert after a pre-set period that can range from four hours to two weeks, and they require a battery to detonate. Upon detonation, the mines cannot function. They added that the U.S. is working to address hazards on the battlefield in the long-term.
The move comes as Ukraine is looking to push back against a larger Russian military, which is encroaching on Ukrainian positions across the 600-mile front and with particular force in the Donetsk region.
The U.S. has been looking for ways to boost Ukraine's prospects on the battlefield with more capabilities, especially as President-elect Trump is set to return to office on Jan. 20. Trump has vowed to end the war, spurring concerns he may cede territory in eastern Ukraine seized by Russia.
Biden is rushing the last of some $9 billion in security aid to Ukraine before inauguration day on Jan. 20. The latest package of some $275 million on Wednesday did not include APLs.
Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Russian mines helped defeat the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive.
"Kyiv would now like to give invading Russian forces a taste of their own medicine," he wrote in an email analysis. "The biggest threat to Ukrainian civilians is Russian strikes and advancing Russian forces, not anti-personnel mines. If we want to help save Ukrainian lives, we should give Kyiv the means to defend itself and defeat Russian forces."
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also confirmed that APLs would be sent on Wednesday.
“The land mines that we would look to provide them would be land mines that are not persistent, you know, we can control when they would self-activate, self-detonate and that makes it far more safer eventually than the things that they are creating on their own,” Austin said, referring to how nonpersistent land mines generally need batteries, making them unable to detonate over time.
The announcement follows Biden’s approval for the use of Western-provided long-range missiles by Ukraine to strike targets within Russia, which enraged Russia and riled allies of Trump, who has previously been critical of Ukraine. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to end the war in a day.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday referred to comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin in September that warned Moscow would view the U.S. and NATO in direct conflict with Russia if the U.S. granted permission to Ukraine to use missiles from the Army Tactical Missile System far-beyond Russia’s borders to hit targets.
“If this decision is taken, it will mean nothing less than the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine,” Putin said at the time.
The approval by Austin on Wednesday also follows Putin’s decision to lower the threshold for nuclear weapons use, which came just days after Biden’s announcement to use long-range missiles inside Russia. Any aggression from a nonnuclear state with the support of a nuclear state will be treated as a joint attack on Russia, according to the update.
Updated at 12:32 p.m. EST