Ukraine has received US cluster munitions, Pentagon says

Approval for the weapons only came last week

The US has provided cluster munitions to Ukraine for its use against Russian forces. Reuters

Cluster munitions provided by the US have arrived in Ukraine, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

The munitions – which are bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets – are seen by the US as a way for Kyiv to use critically needed ammunition to help bolster its offensive and push through Russian front lines.

US leaders debated the thorny issue for months before President Joe Biden made the final decision last week.

The Pentagon says it will send cluster bombs with a reduced “dud rate”, meaning fewer of the smaller bomblets fail to explode.

The unexploded submunitions, which often litter battlefields and populated civilian areas long after a conflict ends, cause unintended deaths, particularly among curious children who pick them up to play with them

US officials said Washington will provide thousands of the rounds, but provided no specific numbers.

Lt Gen Douglas Sims, director of operations for the Joint Staff, told reporters on Thursday that “cluster munitions have indeed been delivered to Ukraine at this point”. But it was not clear if Ukrainian troops have used them yet.

Mr Biden described the decision to provide the projectiles as “very difficult”, citing their record of killing civilians.

More than 120 countries around the world – but not the US, Russia or Ukraine – have signed on to an international convention prohibiting the production of cluster munitions and discouraging their use.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have sent the munitions during the war, and Ukrainian regional officials have regularly accused Russian forces of using them on civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday thanked Mr Biden for the US military aid, and said cluster munitions would help in the fight against Russia.

The two met during Nato's summit in Lithuania, where western nations made fresh pledges of weapons and ammunition to fight Russia’s invasion.

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Ukrainian soldiers cover their ears to protect from Russian tank shelling in a shelter on the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region in July

A cemetery in evening sunlight near Lviv in July

Flooded streets in Kherson in June after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed

Tetiana with her pets, Tsatsa and Chunya, in her house that was flooded when the Kakhovka dam in Kherson was breached

Young cadets sing the national anthem during a graduation ceremony at a cadet lyceum in Kyiv in June

Bakhmut in April, the site of the heaviest battles in the Donetsk region

A message on a mirror reads 'Ukraine will prevail' in a badly damaged school in Kharkiv in February

Ukrainian servicemen in position close to the border with Belarus in February

Hospital staff in Kherson with orphaned children at the regional hospital maternity ward in November 2022

A sniper unit aims at Russian positions in the Kherson region during an operation in November 2022

Ukrainian artillerymen fire at Russian positions near Bakhmut in November 2022

A Ukrainian serviceman near Oskil village in October 2022

Funeral workers carry the coffin of an unidentified civilian who died in the Bucha community during the Russian occupation period in February-March 2022

Cadets practise with gas masks in a bomb shelter on the first day of school at a cadet lyceum in Kyiv, Ukraine, in September

A young girl with her dog waves goodbye to her grandparents from an evacuation train leaving Pokrovsk in August 2022

A child looks up at a building destroyed during attacks in Irpin in May 2022

An elderly patient boards a medical evacuation train in Pokrovsk in May 2022

Nila Zelinska holds a doll belonging to her granddaughter that she found in her destroyed house in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, in May 2022

Residents shelter in the city subway of Kharkiv in May 2022

Destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, April 2022

A family fleeing the village of Ruska Lozova in April 2022 arrive in their shrapnel-riddled car at a screening point in Kharkiv

Smoke fills the air after shelling in Odesa in April

Yehor, 7, with a wooden toy rifle next to destroyed Russian military vehicles near Chernihiv in April 2022

Security Service of Ukraine servicemen enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv in April 2022

A Ukrainian soldier during a pick-up game of football in Irpin in April 2022

The partially abandoned town of Chernobyl in April 2022

Ruslan Mishanin, 36, bids farewell to his nine-year-old daughter as the train with his family leaves Odesa for Poland in April

Halyna Falko, 52, talks to reporters in March 2022 while looking at the destruction caused to her house near Brovary after a Russian attack

Anti-tank barricades on a street in preparation for a possible Russian offensive in Odesa in March 2022

A man recovering items from a burning shop after a Russian attack in Kharkiv in March 2022

Ukrainians under a destroyed bridge as they as they cross the Irpin river on the outskirts of Kyiv in March 2022