WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has decided to send U.S. stocks of cluster munitions to Ukraine amid its fight against Russia, the White House said Friday, defending the controversial move as urgently needed.
The additional assistance comes as Ukraine pushes to recapture territory seized by Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC News the counteroffensive was"going to plan" but he'd like to see progress happen even faster.
The White House on Friday defended the action as necessary because Ukraine could run short on artillery ammunition otherwise, but said it still wasn’t an easy decision for President Biden. "These types of weapons are extremely dangerous," said Richard Weir, a senior researcher in the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch. Weir noted there are various kinds of submunitions, some are designed to penetrate armor or concrete while others are made to unleash as many fragments as possible against troops.
"These are very nasty, destructive weapons for use on the battlefield," Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, told ABC News."They are also particularly harmful for friendly soldiers as well as civilians after a conflict is over because the cluster munitions of all kinds have a failure rate."
But Kimball said those working in the arms control field believe the failure rate of those munitions"in the U.S. stockpile are probably higher when it comes to actual wartime conditions." "They can injure or kill people who are just going about their daily lives -- children playing in playgrounds, people tending to their land," Weir told ABC News.
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