Biden will provide cluster munitions to Ukraine
Long sought by Ukraine, cluster bombs are weapons that open in the air, releasing submunitions, or bomblets, that are dispersed over a large area and are intended to wreak destruction on multiple targets at once.
US President Joe Biden approved the provision of cluster munitions to Ukraine on Friday according to people familiar with the decision, the US publication the Washington Post and the Associated Press.
The announcement comes despite widespread concerns that the bombs can cause civilian casualties and sparked a call from the United Nations to both Russia and Ukraine to avoid using them.
The Pentagon is now expected to send thousands of them as part of a new military aid package worth up to €733 million for the war effort against Russia.
Proponents of banning cluster bombs say they kill indiscriminately and endanger civilians long after their use. Groups have raised alarms about Russia’s use of the munitions in Ukraine.
A convention banning the use of cluster bombs has been joined by more than 120 countries who agreed not to use, produce, transfer or stockpile the weapons and to clear them after they’ve been used.
The United States, Russia and Ukraine are among the countries that have not signed on.
Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office, said Friday that “the use of such munitions should stop immediately and not be used in any place.”
But the Pentagon said it will provide munitions that have a reduced “dud rate,” meaning there will be far fewer unexploded rounds that can result in unintended civilian deaths.
The weapons will come from Pentagon stocks and will also include Bradley and Stryker armoured vehicles and an array of ammunition, such as rounds for howitzers and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS, officials said.
The officials and others familiar with the decision were not authorised to publicly discuss the move before the official announcement and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Ukrainian officials had asked for the weapons to aid their campaign to push through lines of Russian troops and make gains in the ongoing counteroffensive. Russian forces are already using cluster munitions on the battlefield and in populated civilian areas, US officials have said.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, some cluster munitions leave behind bomblets, that have a high rate of failure to explode — up to 40% in some cases. US officials said Thursday that the rate of unexploded ordnance for the munitions that will be going to Ukraine is less than 3% and therefore will mean fewer threats left behind to civilians.
How will NATO allies react?
It is unclear how America’s NATO allies would view the US providing cluster bombs to Ukraine and whether the issue might prove divisive for their largely united support of Kyiv. More than two-thirds of the 30 countries in the alliance are signatories of the 2010 convention on cluster munitions.
“We’re certain that our US friends didn’t take the decision about supplying such ammunition lightly,” German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin. “We need to remember once again that Russia has already used cluster ammunition at a large scale in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Germany made clear on Friday that it won’t be providing any cluster ammunition to Ukraine, as it joined an international treaty prohibiting the weapons more than a decade ago, but it expressed an understanding of the American position.
