KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied anti-personnel landmines to help combat Russian forces.
Speaking to reporters during a trip to Laos, he said the policy change is a result of the Russians’ changing tactics.
Austin said Russian ground forces are leading the movement on the battlefield, rather than troops better protected in armored aircraft carriers. So Ukraine “needs things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians.”
“The landmines that we would like to deliver would be landmines that are not persistent, you know, we can control when they self-activate, self-detonate and that makes it, you know, ultimately much safer than the things that they create themselves Austin said.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The U.S. and some other Western embassies in Kiev said they would remain closed Wednesday for security reasons, with the U.S. delegation saying it had received a warning of a potentially significant Russian airstrike on the Ukrainian capital.
The precaution came after Russian officials promised a response President Joe Biden’s decision to have Ukraine attack targets on Russian territory with US-made missiles – a move that angered the Kremlin.
The US Embassy said the shutdown and strike warning was issued in the context of ongoing Russian missile and drone attacks on Kiev and anticipated a quick return to regular operations.
The Italian and Greek embassies were also closed to the public that day, but the British government said its embassy remained open.
The warwhich one reached the milestone of 1000 days took on a growing international dimension on Tuesday with the arrival of North Korean troops will help Russia on the battlefield — a development that U.S. officials say prompted Biden’s policy change.
Then Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for the use of its nuclear arsenal, with the new doctrine announced on Tuesday allowing a possible nuclear reaction from Moscow, even to a conventional attack on Russia by any country backed by a nuclear power.
That could potentially include U.S.-backed Ukrainian attacks.
Western leaders have dismissed the Russian move as an attempt to deter Ukraine’s allies from providing further support to Kiev. the tension weighed on the stock markets after Ukraine deployed American-made longer-range ATACMS missiles for the first time to strike a target inside Russia.
Western and Ukrainian officials say Russia has stockpiled powerful long-range missiles, possibly in an upcoming attempt to destroy Ukraine’s power grid as winter sets in.
Military analysts say the U.S. decision on the range at which U.S. missiles can be used is not expected to be a game-changer in the war, but it could help weaken Russia’s war effort, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.
“Ukrainian long-range strikes against military objects within the Russian rear are crucial for degrading Russian military capabilities across the theater,” the report said.
Meanwhile North Korea recently delivered additional artillery systems to Russia, according to South Korea. It said that North Korean soldiers had been assigned to the Russian naval and airborne units and that some of them have already begun fighting on the front lines alongside the Russians.
Ukraine struck a factory in Russia’s Belgorod region that makes cargo drones for the armed forces in an overnight attack, said Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian Security Council’s counter-disinformation department.
He also claimed that Ukraine had struck an arsenal in Russia’s Novgorod region, near the city of Kotovo, about 680 kilometers (420 miles) behind the Ukrainian border. The arsenal contained artillery ammunition and several types of rockets, he said.
It was not possible to independently verify the claims.
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