Bipartisan US lawmakers are urging Joe Biden’s administration to send mass-destructive cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move that could aid Kyiv in inflicting significant casualties on Russian forces and raise significant human rights concerns.
Bipartisan members of the Helsinki Commission Joe Wilson, Steve Cohen, and Victoria Spartz urged the White House to send enhanced dual-purpose conventional munitions, also known as DPICMs, to Ukraine in order to support an ongoing counteroffensive in a letter that was sent to US President Joe Biden on Friday.
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The weapon, which can be fired from artillery shells and drops up to 88 bombs across the battlefield, could aid Ukraine in getting past Russian tanks and fortified positions. In contrast, if bombs are not removed, they may continue to kill and injure civilians long after the war is over.
However, as the Pentagon has sent or is preparing to send weapons at the top of Ukraine’s list, starting with howitzers and ending with F-16s, pressure to send artillery cluster bombs has increased within the US government and on Capitol Hill. The pressure is only increasing as Russia successfully holds on to the dragon’s toothed trench lines.
The legislators wrote to Biden on Friday, “Transferring DPICMs to Ukraine presents an opportunity to provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a powerful capability to use against the Russian army and mercenary forces.”
Let’s put this untapped, vast arsenal to good use so that we can win the Ukrainian conflict and reclaim peace in Europe. The letter was delivered to Biden prior to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, staging an unsuccessful uprising against Russian President Vladimir Putin that succeeded in seizing control of a Kremlin military logistics center in Rostov-on-Don over the weekend before dissipating.
Russia hawks, including some Republican lawmakers, have argued that the Biden administration has been too slow to approve sending battle tanks and start training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets, impeding Ukraine’s ability to launch a successful counterattack.
Since Russia’s initial military operation began in February 2022, the Biden administration has sent more than $40 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. The United States and other NATO allies have been instrumental in preventing a Russian victory.
In the past, Foreign Policy asserted that other NATO allies, like Turkey, who started supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions made in the US last fall, were secretly supplying DPICMs to Ukraine.
Lawmakers claim that the US, on the other hand, has a much larger stockpile of these weapons, which can be fired from 155mm howitzers that the Biden administration first gave to Ukraine last year.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), an international treaty that addresses the humanitarian ramifications and unacceptable harm caused to civilians by cluster munitions through a categorical prohibition and a framework for action, forbids the use of cluster bombs.
Numerous smaller bomblets can be contained in the weapons, which scatter over large areas and frequently kill and injure civilians long after they are dropped.
Cluster bomb usage, production, transfer, and stockpiling are all prohibited by the convention. The treaty has been ratified by more than 100 nations, but not by the United States.
In an effort to seize territory in the eastern Donbas region earlier this year, Ukrainian troops reportedly also fired cluster munitions against Russian positions.
Experts are concerned that since the bomblets are dispersed randomly, people may mistake them for toys or other objects.
