The war between Ukraine and Russia continues with its slow escalation of weapons. Although the Ukrainian leader, Volodimir Zelensky, has been asking the West for months – with little success – more ammunition and weapons of high destructive power like fighters and tanks, now the United States will take a step forward: it will deliver cluster bombs so that it can defend itself against Putin’s invasion and continue the summer counteroffensive.
According to international media reports, US President Joe Biden will announce in the next few hours that the new military aid package that they are going to send to Ukraine will include this type of ammunition.
A Pentagon spokesman said the White House was considering sending Dual Purpose Enhanced Conventional Munitions (DPICM) cluster bombs, but only those that have a 2.35% failure rate.
In addition to this ammunition, the US is expected to send aid valued at 800 million dollars. This includes the famous mobile artillery systems HIMARS and other land vehicles such as Bradley and stryker.
It must be borne in mind that the strategic landscape is changing in the war, which is now approaching a year and a half. The Wagner Group mutiny faced by the Russian regime two weeks ago has shown the Putin’s weakness on the terrain. Thus, some analysts consider that it may be the best time for Ukraine to hit the table and accelerate a counteroffensive that has made little progress despite having been underway for several weeks.
A much discussed weapon
This is a class of bombs that was first used in World War II and has been widely discussed ever since. The reason: that when they are fired they disperse without control, in such a way that it does not allow them to attack specific targets and tend to cause civilian casualties or start fires.
In fact, in 2008 the Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international treaty that prohibited cluster bombs. Since then, more than a hundred countries have ratified their commitment to the treaty, but neither the United States, Ukraine nor Russia are among them.
In this sense, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has denounced today in a statement the use of cluster bombs by Russia and Ukraine and in which it also asks the United States not to send this type of munitions to its Ukrainian allies, who have been asking Washington for them for years. months.
“Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions causing death and serious injury to civilians. Russian forces have used cluster munitions extensively, causing numerous civilian deaths and serious injuries“, says the statement of the organization for human rights.
The NGO’s statement has provoked the indignation of the adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office Mikhailo Podoliak: “The ‘activists for human rights’ launch an aggressive campaign of lobby…not to expel Russia from the UN, but to torpedo arms supplies to Ukraine,” he tweeted.
new weapons of bulgaria
While the new military aid from Ukraine arrives, Zelenski reached an agreement with Bulgaria on Thursday so that this country sends him defensive military aid.
Although he did not go into details, the Bulgarian Prime Minister, the pro-European reformer Nikolaj Denkov, has pointed out that the new aid includes training and medical care for Ukrainian soldiers.
“It’s a defensive package, not an offensive one, so that parents can protect their children. If we talk about artillery, it covers a certain distance that does not reach the territory of Russiato prevent (the Russians) from returning to Ukraine,” Zelensky said at a press conference during his visit to the Bulgarian capital.
