Allies React Cautiously to Prospect of U.S. Cluster Weapons for Ukraine

"American allies reacted with caution on Friday to reports that the Biden administration appeared to be on the verge of providing Ukraine with cluster munitions, widely banned weapons that often cause grievous injury to civilians and especially children.

 

This imprecise nature may also put offensive Ukrainian forces at risk of encountering unexploded munitions from earlier deployments, said a research associate at the Arms ControlAssociation, Gabriela Rosa Hernández.

While not criticizing the United States or opposing the move — which the White House has not formally announced — Germany and France said they would not follow suit, pointing to an international treaty they have signed that bans the use, stockpiling or transfer of such weapons. The United States, Russia and Ukraine have not signed the treaty, known as the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

“Germany has also signed the convention; for us this is not an option,” Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, told reporters in Bern, Switzerland.

The French Foreign Ministry also referred to the treaty, also known as the Oslo Convention, saying that France “has pledged not to produce or use cluster munitions, and to discourage their use.” But a spokeswoman for the ministry noted in response to a reporter’s question that neither the United States nor Ukraine were bound by the treaty.

If President Biden approves supplying Ukraine with the weapons, which Kyiv has long sought, it would sharply separate him from many of the United States’ closest allies, and could complicate allies’ efforts to demonstrate unity at a NATO summit next week in Lithuania.

While top U.S. national security officials have had reservations about providing the weapons, they now think they have little choice but to send them to Ukraine, which risks running out of the conventional artillery rounds it needs to fight Russia, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Friday that the military alliance did not have a formal position on using cluster munitions in battle, dodging a question on whether he believed it was the wise for the United States to provide the widely banned weapons to Ukraine.

“It is for individual allies to make decisions on the delivery of weapons and military supplies to Ukraine,” Mr. Stoltenberg told journalists at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “So this will be for governments to decide — not for NATO as an alliance.”

Cluster munitions disperse tiny bomblets that sometimes fail to explode on hitting the ground, only to detonate years later when disturbed by civilians. But officials have said the Biden administration now believes the munitions are the best way to kill Russians who are dug into trenches and blocking Ukraine’s offensive. One American official said on Thursday that it was now clear that the weapons were “100 percent necessary” to meet battlefield needs."