US to supply antipersonnel mines to Ukraine, official says

The Biden administration will provide Ukraine with controversial antipersonnel mines in its war against Russia, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News late Tuesday.

Antipersonnel mines, or APLs, are designed to be used against people, not vehicles. They can be deployed quickly and are intended to slow the advance of ground forces, making them useful in Ukraine's defense against Russian advances in eastern Ukraine, the official said.

The United States has asked the Ukrainians to commit to their use to further limit risks to civilians, the official said, noting that the Ukrainians had committed not to use mines in populated areas of their own civilians.

US-supplied APLs differ from the thousands of landmines used by Russia in eastern Ukraine in that they are “non-persistent”, meaning they become inert over a period of predefined time, generally between four hours and two weeks, depending on the manager. said. They are electrically fused and require power from a battery to explode. Once the battery runs out, they will no longer explode.

Tuesday marked 1,000 days since Russia invaded Ukraine. CBS News learned Sunday that President Biden has lifted restrictions on Ukraine's use of U.S. weapons to carry out strikes deep inside Russia.

U.S.-supplied ATACMS were used on targets in Russia on Tuesday, U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.

Ukraine is one of the most mined countries in the world since Russia's invasion in 2022, and Ukraine is awash in PLA. They are known by deceptively innocent names such as “butterfly” or “petal” mines, because they scatter like flower petals when they fall from the sky.

A Ukrainian deminer demonstrates how Russian forces place a landmine on top of a fragmentation grenade, as Ukrainian soldiers of the 128th Territorial Defense Brigade break from their duties on the front line of the counter-offensive south to refresh their trench attack and anti-mine tactics in southern Ukraine, July 31, 2023. Getty Images

“Typically, several hundred of them at a time will just be liberally and indiscriminately distributed throughout the territory,” said Pete Smith, director of the Ukraine program at the HALO Trust, a nonprofit focused on the elimination of landmines in war zones, on “60 Minutes” in August. “They can rest on roofs. They can sit in gutters. They can take years to reenter society and be visible.”

To date, 164 countries, including Ukraine, have signed the Mine Ban Treaty which prohibits the use of APLs. However, three dozen countries have not accepted it, including Russia and the United States.

In January 2020, then-President Donald Trump reversed an Obama-era policy that banned the use of PLAs anywhere except the Korean Peninsula. However, in June 2022, Mr. Biden reinstated the ban, except for PLAs “necessary for the defense of the Republic of Korea.”

Brit McCandless Farmer contributed to this report.

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Faris Tanyos

Faris Tanyos is a senior editor for CBSNews.com, where he writes and edits articles and tracks breaking news. He previously worked as a digital news producer at several local news stations on the West Coast.

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