WASHINGTON: The United States will soon provide Ukraine with antipersonnel land mines to shore up its defences against Russian forces, a US official said late Tuesday. The decision comes as President Joe Biden works to boost Ukraine’s war effort in the final two months of his administration, before Ukraine aid critic Donald Trump takes power in January.
On Sunday, Biden gave Ukraine the green light to fire US-supplied long-range missiles into Russian territory for the first time, reports AFP.
The US official added that Washington has sought commitments from Ukraine to use the mines in its own territory and only in areas that are not populated in order to decrease the risk they pose to civilians.
The mines are known as being “non-persistent” because they go inert after a set period of time, when their battery power runs out.
Trump has repeatedly promised to end the war quickly, but has not provided details of how he would do so.
With Russia gaining ground and increasing talk of negotiations, Ukraine is wary of being at a disadvantage when it comes to hashing out a peace settlement.
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The provision of US land mines comes on the heels of Ukraine’s use of US-provided ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles to strike targets inside Russian territory for the first time, following newly-granted permission from Biden that advanced US weaponry could be used offensively against targets in Russia.
For its part Russia warned it would respond to Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles — which it launched for the first time Tuesday — with President Vladimir Putin issuing a possible nuclear threat as the conflict passed the 1,000 day benchmark.
Moscow warned on Tuesday that it would respond to Ukraine’s firing of the longer-range ATACMS missiles, which reportedly hit targets in Russia’s Bryansk region, reports Reuters news agency.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the missile attack showed that Western countries wanted to “escalate” the conflict.
“We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia. And we will react accordingly,” Lavrov told a news conference at the G20 summit in Brazil.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Tuesday lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons, a move that the White House, United Kingdom and European Union condemned as “irresponsible”.
