The Biden administration would be considering the Ukraine’s request for access to US stockpiles of controversial cluster bombs. To report it is the Cnnwhich speaks of “Ukrainian officials and lawmakers” who “in recent months have urged the Biden administration and members of Congress to supply the Ukrainian army with cluster munitions, weapons that are banned by more than 100 countries but which Russia continues to use with devastating effect” within Ukrainian territory. Kiev’s request revealed to CNN by several US and Ukrainian officials, it reads, “is one of the most controversial the Ukrainians have made to the United States since the war began in February“. He usesexplains the newspaper that exclusively publishes the news, “they didn’t reject it outright”a detail this “that had not been previously reported”.
Senior US officials, CNN recalls, “have publicly declared that they intend to give the Ukrainians all the support they need to give them an edge at the negotiating table with Russia”, but also that “Western military equipment is not infinite“. For their part, the Ukrainians would then “make it clear to the United States that they could use the cluster munitions currently gathering dust in American depots”.
For Ukraine, CNN underlines, cluster munitions could help “address two main problems: the need for more ammunition for US and other supplied artillery and rocket systems, and a way to reduce Russia’s numerical superiority in artillery”.
While the Biden administration still wouldn’t have taken the option off the table “as a last resort,” sources nonetheless say “that the proposal has not yet received significant consideration, largely due to restrictions Congress has placed on the ability of the United States to transfer cluster munitions“. President Joe Biden, then explains the US newspaper, “could cancel these restrictions, but the administration has indicated to the Ukrainians that this is unlikely in the short term”.
