The US said it will send cluster bombs to Ukraine as part of a new push to support the country’s counteroffensive and boost its dwindling stocks of ammunition, overruling concerns that the weapons often fail to explode and pose a grave danger to civilians.
(Bloomberg) — The US said it will send cluster bombs to Ukraine as part of a new push to support the country’s counteroffensive and boost its dwindling stocks of ammunition, overruling concerns that the weapons often fail to explode and pose a grave danger to civilians.
President Joe Biden called the move a “difficult decision” given the risk posed by cluster bombs, but said Russia has been raining the munitions on Ukraine for months. US officials said Kyiv’s forces have been firing artillery at a rate that exceeds production and the US needs to make sure supplies don’t run out before output ramps up later this year.
“We’re in a situation where Ukraine continues to be brutally attacked across the board by munitions, by these cluster munitions,” Biden told CNN, adding that Ukraine was running low. “It took me a while to be convinced to do it.”
Ukraine argues that the cluster munitions will help target dug-in Russian positions. It comes about a month into the counteroffensive, which so far hasn’t delivered major breakthroughs. US officials said Ukraine is committed to demining efforts after the conflict ends and won’t use the bombs in civilian areas.
The decision on cluster bombs is only the latest example of the Biden administration agreeing to provide weapons to Ukraine that it once deemed off-limits for fear of escalating the conflict or provoking a response from Russian President Vladimir Putin outside Ukraine’s borders. The Pentagon announced details of the delivery later Friday, saying the munitions were part of a $800 million package drawing on existing US stocks.
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The plan may cause strain with NATO allies that are among the more than 100 signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a 2010 agreement that bans the use and transfer of such weapons. NATO leaders are set to meet in Vilnius, Lithuania next week and the issue is likely to come up.
Earlier Friday, France and Germany said they won’t supply cluster bombs. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the decision was for individual countries, “not for NATO as an alliance.”
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National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, briefing reporters earlier Friday, denied any cracks in the alliance over the US decision to supply the weapons. Russian cluster munitions have a failure rate of up to 30% compared to the 2.5% failure rate of US-supplied stocks, and tens of millions of the Russian weapons are already scattered across the country, he said, making the US decision easier.
The US is sending the weapons even though they appear not to meet congressional mandates that bar the US from exporting cluster bombs unless they have a failure rate of less than 1%. At a later briefing, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said Biden has waiver authority and will use it for Ukraine. He said the US has hundreds of thousands of the munitions it could send.
At least three top Republican lawmakers on the defense and foreign relations committees voiced their support for the White House decision: House Foreign Affairs chairman Mike McCaul, his Senate counterpart James Risch and top Senate Armed Services Committee Republican Roger Wicker.
Arms-control groups have criticized the Biden administration for considering whether to send cluster bombs. They note that the weapons that will likely be sent, known as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, have dud rates of 6% or more.
“The USA’s plan to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine is a retrograde step, which undermines the considerable advances made by the international community in its attempts to protect civilians from such dangers both during and after armed conflicts,” Amnesty International military researcher Patrick Wilcken said in a statement.
Fired from aircraft or from ground-based artillery, missile or rocket launchers, cluster munitions open in flight, dispersing bomblets that can strike armored vehicles or personnel and are particularly effective against dug-in forces.
–With assistance from Roxana Tiron.
(Updates with Biden comments starting in second paragraph.)
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