(Kyiv) The Ukrainian armed forces have already received cluster munitions, a controversial weapon promised by Washington to Kyiv to help it in its slow counter-offensive against the Russian army, a Ukrainian general 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 American television CNN.
The United States announced last week that it would deliver the weapons to Ukraine, despite concerns over the long-term risk posed to civilians.
“The enemy also understands that by obtaining these munitions we will have an advantage,” Tarnavsky said, while assuring that Ukrainian forces would not use these weapons in heavily populated areas.
“The Russians think we are going to use it on all areas of the front […] This is very wrong,” he argued.
US President Joe Biden said the decision to deliver cluster munitions to Ukraine was “difficult”, but stressed that Kyiv needed additional weaponry to replenish its depleted stockpiles.
Controversial, these weapons can disperse up to several hundred small explosive charges, capable of remaining unexploded in the ground and creating a risk for civilians after the end of a conflict.
They are banned by many countries, notably European, signatories of a convention signed in Oslo in 2008 and to which neither Russia, nor the United States, nor Ukraine are parties.
The Kremlin has already threatened to take “countermeasures” if Kyiv uses these bombs against Russian troops in Ukraine.