WATCH LIVE: State Department holds briefing as Biden permits Ukraine using anti-personnel land mines

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use American-supplied antipersonnel land mines to help it slow Russia’s battlefield progress in the war, the U.S. defense secretary said Wednesday, marking Washington’s second major policy shift in days after it decided to let Ukraine strike targets on Russian soil with longer-range U.S.-made missiles.
State Department spokesman Matt Miller is expected to speak at 1:15 p.m. ET. Watch in the player above.
The war, which reached its 1,000-day milestone on Tuesday, has largely been going Russia’s way in recent months. Russia’s bigger army is slowly pushing Ukraine’s outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region, while Ukrainian civilians have repeatedly been clobbered by Russian drones and missiles often fired from inside Russia.
The U.S. and some other Western embassies in Kyiv stayed closed Wednesday after a threat of a major Russian aerial attack on the Ukrainian capital.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the change in Washington’s policy on antipersonnel land mines for Ukraine follows changing tactics by the Russians.
Russian ground troops are leading the movement on the battlefield, 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 came two months before Donald Trump moves back into the White House. Trump has pledged to swiftly end the war and has criticized the amount the U.S. has spent on supporting Ukraine. Biden administration officials say they are determined to help Ukraine as much as possible before Joe Biden leaves office.
Antipersonnel land mines have long been criticized by charities and activists because they present a lingering threat to civilians.
Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide called the U.S. decision “very problematic” because Ukraine is a signatory to an international convention opposing the use of land mines.
Austin sought to allay concerns.
“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.
Russia has already been using land mines in Ukraine.
Nonpersistent land mines generally require batteries, so they become unable to detonate over time, making them safer for civilians than those that remain deadly for years.
Austin noted that Ukraine is already manufacturing its own antipersonnel land mines. And the U.S. already provides Ukraine with anti-tank mines. Russia has routinely used land mines in the war, but those don’t become inert over time.
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.