U.S. To Give Ukraine Antipersonnel Mines Despite Outcry By Rights Groups

KYIV -- The White House said it will provide Ukraine with antipersonnel mines to help it fend off Russia’s battlefield advances, despite widespread opposition to such weapons by international rights groups and following heavy usage of similar devices by Russia.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was quoted on November 20 by news agencies as saying during a visit to Laos that the decision to provide the controversial mines was made because of a change in Russian tactics.

"They don't lead with their mechanized forces anymore," he said "They lead with dismounted forces who are able to close and do things to kind of pave the way for mechanized forces."

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Ukraine has a need "for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians," he added.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Russia had used at least 13 types of antipersonnel mines in Ukraine since February 2022.

"Russia has used anti-personnel land mines widely in Ukraine...causing hundreds of casualties and contaminating vast tracts of agricultural land," it said.

Rights and humanitarian groups have long criticized the use of antipersonnel mines, saying they pose a danger to civilians.

In a statement following the U.S. announcement, HRW said the "decision to transfer antipersonnel land mines risks civilian lives and sets back international efforts to eradicate these indiscriminate weapons.”

More than 160 countries have agreed to ban the use of antipersonnel mines, although the United States and Russia are not signatories to the convention. Ukraine ratified the convention in December 2005.

When asked in the past about possible use of such mines, Ukraine said it could not comment on the types of weapons utilized during the current armed conflict "before the end of the war and the restoration of our sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Antipersonnel mines are hidden in the ground and are designed to detonate when enemy troops walk on or near them.

Some reports have said the mines being provided by Washington are "nonpersisent," meaning that after a set period of time they no longer are operational and are rendered harmless.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the decision on the mines, calling them "very important" weapons in the effort to blunt Russian assaults and saying the move would "totally strengthen" Ukraine's frontline troops.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials said Washington's embassy in Kyiv will likely resume normal operations on November 21 after having closed earlier on November 20 when it received "specific information" about "a potential significant air strike."

Late in the day, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told a briefing that "I can't go into the details of the threat, but we're always keeping a close eye on it.

“The embassy is expected to return to normal operations tomorrow," he added.

In closing, the embassy urged employees and U.S. citizens in the Ukrainian capital to take immediate shelter if an air-raid alert was announced.

"Out of an abundance of caution, the Embassy will be closed, and Embassy employees are being instructed to shelter in place," it said in a statement, without giving any details about the possible strike.

The embassies of Italy, Greece, and Spain said they had also shut their operations following the unusual U.S. warning. Spain later said it reopened its facility after a temporarily closing.

The Ukrainian military suggested the information the U.S. Embassy was referring to was "fake."

"Messengers and social networks…are spreading a message about the threat of a 'particularly massive' missile and bomb attack on Ukrainian cities today."

"This message is a fake. It contains grammatical errors typical of Russian information and psychological operations,” it added.

It urged residents not to ignore air-raid sirens but also "not to succumb to panic."

An air-raid alert was issued for several Ukrainian regions, including Kyiv, early on November 20 due to the imminence of Russian drone strikes.

The U.S. warning came one day after Moscow said Ukraine had used U.S.-made long-range missile systems to strike a weapons depot in Russia's Bryansk region following U.S. President Joe Biden's reported authorization of their use.

The White House has not officially confirmed the decision.

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In another move by the current U.S. administration aimed at aiding Ukraine, Biden has informed Congress that he intends to cancel $4.65 billion in loans to Ukraine, a State Department spokesman said.

Zelenskiy did not confirm or deny the use of ATACMS in the attack on Bryansk, saying during a news conference that "Ukraine has long-range capabilities.... We now have a long 'Neptune' (Ukrainian-made cruise missiles) and not just one. And now we have ATACMS. And we will use all of this."

On November 20, Ukraine's military intelligence agency said a Russian military command post had been "successfully struck" in the town of Gubkin in Russia's Belgorod region, some 168 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. It did not say what kind of missiles had been used in the attack.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported the Ukrainian military had also fired a British-supplied Storm Shadow into Russia for the first time, citing an unnamed Western official.

Separately, the Ukrainian Air Force said Russian troops attacked Ukraine early on November 20 with 122 drones, 56 of which were shot down over 14 regions -- Kyiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskiy, Sumy, Mykolayiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv.

The mayor of Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa, Hennadiy Trukhanov, said the death toll after a Russian strike on the city on November 18 had risen to 11.