defense secretary Lloyd Austin announced today that the US will be providing Ukraine anti-personnel mines for the first time in the war what does that mean for Ukraine and why now Ukraine is facing an enormous groundbased conflict against tens of thousands of Russian forces augmented by North Korean troops in the K region but those troops aren’t moving by tanks or armored carriers anymore because Ukraine has been so effective in its use of drones they’re now moving by foot and the idea is to mine that territory to slow down the troops and to make it easier for the ukrainians to hold that Turf this came after the Biden Administration also loosened restrictions on longer range missiles called attacks for the first time allowing Ukraine to use those missiles to strike inside Russia one of the main reasons that the US has not provided Ukraine anti-personnel mines to date is it had been trying to get them basically out of conflicts in general those mines typically end up injuring civilians because they are buried in the ground and they stay there for decades and often many years after a conflict is ended children or civilians accidentally step on them