Nov 19 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden has approved provision of anti-personnel land mines to Ukraine, a U.S. official told Reuters, a step that could help slow Russian advances in its east, especially when used along with other munitions from the United States.
The United States expects Ukraine to use the mines in its own territory, though it has committed not to use them in areas populated with its own civilians, the official said. The Washington Post first reported the development.
The office of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian defence ministry, the Russian defence ministry and the Kremlin did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests to comment.
The United States has provided Ukraine with anti-tank mines throughout its war with Russia, but the addition of anti-personnel mines aims at blunting the advance of Russian ground troops, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A little bit of perspective from Finland, as a neighbour of Russia. We have suffered from old landmines, so we are pretty familiar with the downsides. Finland joined the Ottawa Treaty in 2012. That has been largely seen as a mistake. If we would deploy mines in a new war, the locations would be documented well so that they could be disarmed with no harm to our civilians. And as a small country, we are not going to invade any other country and leave mines there after a war.
So there isn’t really any benefit to our civilians. But we lost one cost effective way to defend against an aggressive neighbour who has superior numbers of people to send as cannon fodder.