The Biden administration will supply Ukraine with controversial anti-personnel mines in its war with Russia, a US official confirmed to CBS News on Tuesday night.
Anti-personnel mines, or APLs, are designed to be used against people, not vehicles. They can be deployed quickly and are intended to blunt the advance of ground forces, making them useful in defending Ukraine against Russian advances in Eastern Ukraine, the official said.
The US has sought a commitment from the Ukrainians on their use in order to further reduce the risk to civilians, said the official, noting that the Ukrainians have committed not to use mines in civilian areas.
The US-supplied APLs are different from the thousands of landmines deployed by Russia in eastern Ukraine because they are “non-counterfeit,” meaning they become useless within a set time, usually between four hours and two weeks, the official said. said. They are electrically connected and require battery power to explode. When the battery is dead, it will not explode.
Tuesday marked the 1,000th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. CBS News learned Sunday that President Biden it had removed the boundaries about Ukraine’s use of US weapons to carry out strikes deep in Russia.
ATACMS provided by the US were used on Tuesday about targets inside Russia, US officials confirmed to CBS News.
Ukraine was one of the the countries with the most mining in the world since the invasion of Russia in 2022, and Ukraine is full of APLs. They are known by deceptively innocent names like “butterfly” or “pits” because they scatter like flower petals when they fall from the sky.
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“Typically, several hundred of these at once will be distributed freely and indiscriminately all over the place,” Pete Smith, Ukraine program manager for the HALO Trust, a non-profit organization focused on eradicating landmine warfare, told “60 Minutes” in August. “They can rest on the roof. They can live in the bathroom. It can be years before they come back into the community and be seen.”
To date, 164 countries, including Ukraine, have signed the Mine Ban Treaty that prohibits the use of APLs. However, twelve countries did not agree to it, including Russia and the US
In January 2020, former President Donald Trump rescinded an Obama-era policy that prohibited the use of APLs anywhere except on the Korean Peninsula. However, in June 2022, Mr. Biden reinstated the ban, except for APLs “necessary to protect the Republic of Korea.”
contributed to this report.
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