Biden Defends Cluster-Munitions Transfer: 'The Ukrainians Are Running Out of Ammunition'

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

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Bucking arms-control advocates, powerful human-rights groups, certain
European officials, and foreign-policy progressives within the Democratic
Party, President Biden opted to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine
earlier today. They will be delivered as part of his administration’s 42nd
tranche of security assistance delivered to Ukrainian forces.

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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Biden this afternoon:


The ammunition in question, dual-purpose improved conventional munition
(DPICM), releases dozens of grenades contained within each shell. That
makes it extraordinarily effective at targeting specific areas with
concentrated groups of enemy troops, but unexploded bomblets that remain
are capable of harming civilians, including after the conflict ends.

The move was therefore controversial among certain groups and officials
due to concerns that the use of the cluster munitions would litter
Ukraine’s landscape with unexploded ordnance that would kill civilians for
years to come, even after the end of the war. Others, meanwhile, including
the Ukrainian government and congressional Republicans, had for months
urged Biden to transfer the ammunition, arguing that Kyiv needs every
weapon in its arsenal to win the war — and that the consequences of
Russian occupation are far worse than those wrought by cluster munitions,
which will be used against Russian military positions and not civilian
centers anyway.

But the president has revealed that, at the end of the day, his decision
came down to the fact that “the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.”

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, he cast his decision as
“difficult” but said: “This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re
running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.” The 155 mm
ammunition that Washington has been transferring to Ukraine is in short
supply, Biden said.

Biden added that the decision to transfer the cluster munitions was “to
allow for this transition period, while we get more 155-millimeter
weapons, these shells for the Ukrainians.”

The U.S. Army is in the process of dramatically scaling up production of
155-millimeter shells, but Biden’s comments show that serious production
gaps remain. And for Biden, that, taken with the Ukrainian
counteroffensive’s slow gains, mattered more in the end than the concerns
raised by progressive-leaning nonprofit groups and German officials.


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