kyiv presses Washington for cluster bombs banned in 123 countries

kyiv is continuing to ask Washington for more weapons, but this time it wants the controversial cluster bombs, banned by more than 120 countries because they could cause mass civilian deaths, to be dropped on Russian troops from drones, Reuters reported on Monday, citing US lawmakers.

According to two members of the US House Armed Services Committee, Jason Crow and Adam Smith, Ukrainian officials urged US lawmakers at the Munich Security Conference in February to pressure the White House to obtain approval for the delivery of these munitions.

Ukraine is seeking to obtain MK-20, also known as CBU-100, air-dropped cluster bombs that open in mid-flight, releasing more than 240 dart-like submunitions, or bomblets.

kyiv hopes this type of weapon will give it an advantage on the battlefield. According to Smith, the Ukrainian Armed Forces believe that these submunitions “have better armor-piercing capabilities” than the bombs they have dropped from drones until now.

Several congressmen “quite favorable” to kyiv’s requests

Reuters notes that there is some support in the US government on the issue. One congressional official said that most Republicans are “quite supportive” of Kiev’s requests. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham argued that this is a conflict in which the Ukrainians have fewer people and that cluster munitions are really effective. In his opinion, in the areas where the Kiev regime would use these projectiles “there are no civilians.”

In addition, it is noted that although the company Textron Systems Corporations, which works for the Pentagon, stopped producing MK-20 in 2016, there are still more than a million of these in the US military reserves. Their supply would also alleviate the shortage of other types of 155mm projectiles that Washington sends to the Ukrainian Army in huge quantities.

Supplying Ukraine with “banned weapons” would undermine its moral authority

However, it is not certain that the administration of US President Joe Biden will take this step.

Cluster bombs typically deliver large numbers of bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area. Opponents argue that when these bomblets disperse, they can maim and kill civilians, and that they have a high failure rate, so unexploded shells pose a danger for years.

Thus, according to Tom Malinowski, a former congressman who served as the State Department’s top human rights official, supplying Ukraine with “prohibited weapons would undermine its moral authority.”

Jason Crow, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he was opposed to providing such weapons to Kiev because of their high failure rate, which would worsen the already huge problem of unexploded ordnance on Ukrainian territory. However, he said he could support the delivery with guarantees that Kiev troops would remove the bomblets and “use them for non-cluster tasks.”

Due to potential civilian casualties, in 2008, 123 countries adopted a convention banning the use of cluster bombs, although countries such as the US, Ukraine, Russia, China and Israel did not join the treaty. With RT

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