The Biden administration has approved supplying Ukraine with American anti-personnel mines to bolster defenses against Russian attacks as Ukrainian front lines in the country’s east have buckled, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said today.

The decision is the latest in a series of moves by Russia and the United States related to the war in Ukraine that have escalated tensions between the two.

The White House recently granted permission to Ukraine to fire longer-range American missiles at targets in Russia, which the Ukrainians did for the first time Tuesday. Moscow in response formalized a new doctrine lowering the threshold for when it would use nuclear weapons.

Austin said the U.S. decision was prompted by Russia’s increasing reliance on foot soldiers to lead their assaults, instead of armored vehicles. Austin, speaking to reporters while traveling in Laos, said the shift in policy follows changing tactics by the Russians. Because of that, Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians,” Austin said.

“They’ve asked for these, and so I think it’s a good idea,” Austin said.

The move is also noteworthy because it is part of a series of late actions taken in the waning weeks of the Biden presidency to bolster Ukraine. President Joe Biden in the past has sought to calibrate U.S. help for Ukraine against his own concern about crossing Russian “red lines” that could lead to direct conflict between Washington and Moscow.

But since the Nov. 5 election that will bring former President Donald Trump back to the White House, Biden administration officials have said the potential benefits of the actions outweigh the escalation risks.

The announcement came on a day of increased anxiety in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and across the country. The United States closed its embassy in Kyiv, warning of a “significant air attack,” as Ukraine and the West brace for more intensive assaults by the Russians.

Mines in general have been devastatingly effective in the war in Ukraine, and Russia has made extensive use of them. The mines are planted by hand but can also be scattered remotely with rockets or drones behind opponents’ lines, to catch soldiers as they move to and from positions, a tactic that can assist an offensive.

Land mines, however, have been most effective in defense. A broad belt of dense minefields in southern Ukraine stymied a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 and gravely wounded a large but undisclosed number of Ukrainian soldiers.

Most anti-personnel mines are small explosives about the size of a hockey puck that are triggered by the pressure of a footstep.

The Biden administration’s decision came despite widespread condemnation of mines by rights groups that cite their toll on civilians, which can stretch for years or decades after conflicts end as the locations of minefields are left unmarked or forgotten. Ukraine is already the most heavily mined country in the world, according to the United Nations.

Most countries in the world, but not the United States and Russia, are signatories of a convention banning the use or stockpiling of land mines, the 1997 Ottawa Treaty. Ukraine is a signatory to the agreement.

The U.N. said in a report released in October that since 2022, 407 Ukrainian civilians have died and 944 were wounded by mines and unexploded ordnance.

An investigation by the rights group Human Rights Watch in 2023 pointed to the use of rocket-dispersed land mines by Ukrainian troops near the eastern town of Izium in 2022. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said it would investigate the allegation. As the United States is not a signatory, it is not obliged to refrain from supplying land mines to other countries.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a query on the decision to transfer American land mines to Ukraine.

Russia has seeded mines throughout vast swaths of Ukraine since 2014 as front lines have swayed over forests, farm fields and villages. It has also set many so-called victim-activated booby traps, such as explosives rigged to detonate when a car door is opened, a category of weapon also prohibited in the mine ban treaty.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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