‘Frankly shocking’: Human rights groups thrash Biden’s decision to send land mines to Ukraine

Human rights groups are fiercely criticizing President Joe Biden’s decision to give Ukraine anti-personnel land mines as it fights off a Russian invasion.

The decision reverses a pledge Biden made to limit the use of such land mines in 2022. It comes as Biden prepares to leave office and reflects mounting U.S. concerns over Russia’s battlefield gains in eastern Ukraine.

But although the type of land mine the Biden team is handing to Ukraine has certain safeguards, rights groups nonetheless warned that the weapons pose special and long-term dangers.

“Anti-personnel land mines are indiscriminate weapons that kill and maim civilians, and especially children, for generations after wars end,” said Hichem Khadhraoui, executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict advocacy group. “These weapons cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants as required by international humanitarian law.”

Ben Linden, a top official with Amnesty International USA, said, “It is devastating, and frankly shocking, that President Biden made such a consequential and dangerous decision just before his public service legacy is sealed for the history books.”

The Biden administration defended the move on multiple grounds. It noted that the types of mines it is providing are “non-persistent,” meaning they become inert after a time.

“They are electrically fused and require battery power to detonate. Once the battery runs out, they will not detonate,” said a U.S. official, who was granted anonymity to candidly explain the administration’s choice.

The Biden administration in July 2023 began to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions that had been held in large numbers in U.S. military stockpiles since the end of the Cold War, but which the United States had previously been barred from sending. But it held off on sending anti-personnel land mines, such as the ones it is sending now, which can be effective in stopping massed infantry assaults that Ukraine is likely to face from thousands of North Korean troops that have arrived in the Kursk region of Russia, but can be left on the battlefield for generations, potentially long after the conflict is over.

More than 50,000 square miles of Ukraine needs to be searched for land mines and explosives, according to Ukrainian government estimates, an area larger than England.

Biden in 2022 issued a new policy to bar the U.S. use or transfer of anti-personnel mines outside of the Korean peninsula. This came after then-President Donald Trump in 2020 undid Obama-era restrictions on U.S. land mine uses.

The latest decision underscores growing unease within the Biden administration over the desperate battlefield situation as Russia makes slow and costly but incremental gains against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

The land mine decision follows another Biden reversal: He recently agreed to let Ukraine use American-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia following months of pressure from Ukraine and its strongest supporters in the West.

The U.S. also has asked Ukraine to restrict its use of the mines — not employing them in areas populated with Ukrainian civilians and to use them on its own territory. The goal of the mines is to limit Russian advances on Ukrainian territory, especially in the east.

Russia, which the U.S. says uses long-lasting mines, has placed thousands of such explosives throughout eastern Ukraine, where it has grabbed significant amounts of land.

More than 160 countries have signed onto a 1997 international treaty vowing to ban the production, stockpile and transfer of anti-personnel land mines. Ukraine is a signatory to the treaty, but the United States and Russia are not.