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MADRID 20 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has approved the sending of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine in another important policy change, after in recent days he authorized Ukrainian authorities to use long-range American weapons against Russia, according to reports. several American media citing sources familiar with the matter.
Washington expects Ukraine to use these antipersonnel mines to reinforce its defensive lines within its territory, while Russian advances threaten to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses, not as an offensive capability in Russia, while it has sought assurances that kyiv will try to limit the risk that mines present for civilians, as reported by the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’ or the American television network CNN.
The goal is for the landmines to help Ukrainian troops shore up their defenses by slowing down the Russian military — which has made significant gains in the Donetsk region and in recent months has gained territory at the fastest pace since 2022 — and funnel them into areas where they can be attacked with artillery and rockets.
The United States has provided anti-tank mines to kyiv since the first days of the war to mitigate Russia’s numerical superiority in armored vehicles, but had not agreed to deliver anti-personnel mines for fear of the danger they may present. Human rights groups have long criticized the use of landmines because they can kill indiscriminately and can remain active for years after the conflict in which they were initially used has ended.
According to the officials consulted by the aforementioned media, the type of mines that the United States will provide to Ukraine will be “non-persistent”, that is, they will have an internal mechanism to shorten the useful life of the detonator, in order to reduce the danger to the civilians. Ukrainian political leaders have reportedly pledged not to deploy mines in densely populated areas.
Neither Russia nor the United States are signatories to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, the Ottawa Convention, which prohibits the deployment and transfer of anti-personnel landmines. However, Ukraine is. The UN has come to denounce this week that Ukraine has become one of the most mined places in the world, with almost a quarter of its territory contaminated with mines, after a thousand days of war, since February 2022.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned this Wednesday that the aforementioned international treaty runs the risk of being undermined by a new use by countries such as Russia or Burma, which are not signatories, despite having achieved “important progress” since it came into force 25 years ago and to which 164 countries have joined, including all NATO members, except the United States, although the president, Joe Biden, established the goal of finally joining the treaty in 2022.
“The positive impact of the treaty can be seen in the drop in the production of anti-personnel mines, the virtual end of transfers of these weapons and the destruction of more than 55 million stockpiled mines. However, the new use of anti-personnel mines by from countries that have not acceded threatens both the lives of civilians and the effectiveness of this life-saving treaty,” said HRW associate arms director Mark Hiznay.
In this sense, he stressed that “landmine clearance is a crucial task, as are measures to meet the lifelong needs of (their) survivors.” “Governments must ensure that adequate resources are available to all countries that need assistance so that the humanitarian objectives of the treaty are achieved,” he concluded.