President Joe Biden has decided to send US stockpiles of cluster munitions to Ukraine in the fight against Russia, defending the controversial move as urgent.
The weapons are part of a new military aid package worth up to $800 million.
The additional aid comes as Ukraine seeks to retake territory captured by Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC News the counter-offensive is “going according to plan” but would like to see even faster progress.
Zelenskyi said any needed equipment shipped to Ukraine will help his troops “move faster, save more lives and hold out longer.”
But the decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is not without concern, as human rights groups cite the danger they pose to civilians and numerous countries have banned them for more than a decade.
“We recognize that cluster munitions pose a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters. “That’s why we delayed the decision for as long as possible. But there is also a massive risk of civilian damage as Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subdue more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine doesn’t have enough artillery. That is unbearable for us.”
Biden also on Friday defended the measure as necessary, telling ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze that Ukraine was “running out of ammunition.”
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on health care and the economy at the White House on July 7, 2023 in Washington.
Jonathan Ernst/Portal
Still, the president told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria it was a “difficult decision.”
Here’s what you should know about the weapons.
What are cluster munitions?
Cluster munitions disperse unguided submunitions or bomblets as small as 20 kilograms over a large area, perhaps the size of several soccer fields. The US last used them during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The weapons can be fired from the plane or from the ground. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, anywhere from dozens to 600 bomblets can be fired at once, depending on the type used.
“These types of weapons are extremely dangerous,” said Richard Weir, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Crisis and Conflict Division. Weir noted that there are different types of submunitions, some designed to penetrate armor or concrete, while others are designed to launch as many fragments as possible against troops.
A US defense official told lawmakers last month that he believes such weapons would be “useful” for Ukraine, “particularly against entrenched Russian positions on the battlefield.”
Ukrainian serviceman Igor Ovcharruck holds a defused cluster bomb from an MSLR missile amid a display of Russian army missile fragments that a Ukrainian munitions expert said did not explode on impact in Kharkiv region, Ukraine October 21, 2022.
Clodagh Kilcoyne/Portal, FILE
However, cluster munitions also pose a significant risk to civilians because they are randomly distributed over an area, releasing some bombs that may not detonate on impact and only detonate much later – even decades later.
“These are very bad, destructive weapons to use on the battlefield,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told ABC News. “In addition, they are particularly harmful to friendly soldiers and civilians after a conflict, since cluster munitions of all types have a failure rate.”
The Pentagon announced Friday that it will be shipping its latest enhanced conventional dual-use munitions (DPICMs), which have a failure rate, or “dud rate,” of 2.35% or less. Undersecretary for Policy at the Department of Defense Colin Kahl said they had hundreds of thousands of these cartridges available.
Kahl compared that number to the failure rate of cluster munitions used by Russia against Ukraine, which he says is between 30 and 40 percent.
But Kimball said those working in arms control believe the failure rate of these munitions “is likely higher in US stockpiles given actual wartime conditions.”
Asked whether the Defense Ministry’s unexploded ordnance studies on the munitions sent to Ukraine will be made public, Kahl said the reports were classified but had “high confidence” in the numbers.
Why are they controversial?
More than 100 countries have banned cluster munitions in principle. Governments that signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008 pledged never to use, manufacture or stockpile cluster munitions.
Russia, Ukraine and the United States have not signed the treaty, but most NATO countries have.
“They can hurt or kill people going about their daily lives — kids playing in playgrounds, people taking care of their country,” Weir told ABC News.
“They act like landmines in that sense,” Weir said. “So it’s the severe civilian damage that comes with these weapons that makes them so controversial.”
Officials said Ukraine has made pledges to minimize risk to civilians, including a pledge not to use them in urban areas, and will commit to post-conflict demining efforts to find unexploded munitions that pose a threat.
“I’m just as concerned about the humanitarian situation as anyone, but the worst thing for civilians in Ukraine is that Russia is winning the war,” Kahl said. He added that the US will monitor how the systems are being used and whether Ukraine’s assurances are being honored.
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Human Rights Watch earlier called on both Russia and Ukraine to stop using cluster munitions.
Weir said cluster munitions were involved in one of the worst civilian casualty incidents to date in the war: the attack on the Kramatorsk train station in April 2022. At least 50 people died and more than a hundred were injured, ABC News reported at the time.
“It ripped people’s bodies apart and injured people around the station,” he said. “But this keeps happening in regions across Ukraine where there is fighting and where we have documented the use of various types of submunitions.”
-Luis Martinez of ABC contributed to this report.