The Ukrainian armed forces have already received cluster munitions, a controversial weapon promised by Washington to Kiev to help it in its slow counteroffensive against the Russian army, military officials from the two countries said on Thursday.
“We just received them, we haven’t used them yet, but they can radically change” the situation on the battlefield, Oleksandre Tarnavsky, the commander of the counteroffensive in the south of the country, said in an interview on US television CNN. The United States announced last week that it would hand over the weapons to Ukraine, despite concerns about the long-term risk it poses to civilians.
“The Russians think that we are going to use it in all areas of the front (…) That is very false,” he argued.
The difficulties of the counteroffensive
In Washington, a senior US official, Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, confirmed to the press that these weapons were now “in the Ukraine”.
Asked about the difficulties of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, he remarked: “this is a difficult war, which is being fought on very rugged terrain and under enemy fire.”
US President Joe Biden said the decision to deliver cluster munitions to Ukraine was “difficult” but stressed that Kiev needed additional weaponry to replenish its depleted stockpiles, and that the United States was starting to run out of munitions. conventional.
Controversial, these cluster munitions can disperse up to several hundred small explosive charges, capable of remaining unexploded on the ground and creating a risk to civilians after the end of a conflict.
They are banned by many countries, especially Europeans, signatories to a convention signed in Oslo in 2008 and to which Russia, the United States, and Ukraine are not a party. The Kremlin has already threatened to take “countermeasures” if kyiv uses these bombs against Russian troops in Ukraine.
Source: BFM TV
