JUST IN: White House says Pres. Biden has decided to send U.S. stocks of cluster munitions to Ukraine amid its fight against Russia.
The weapons will be part of a new military aid package worth up to $800 million.
Zelenskyy said any needed equipment supplied to Ukraine will help his troops "to move faster, to save more lives, to stand our ground for a longer time." "We recognize cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordinance," national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. "This is why we deferred the decision for as long as we could. But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery. That is intolerable to us.
A U.S. defense official told lawmakers last month they believed such weapons "would be useful" for Ukraine, "especially against dug-in Russian positions on the battlefield." The Pentagon said Thursday it has "multiple variants" of dual-purpose improved conventional munitions and the ones they're considering providing Ukraine would not include older models with failure rates -- or "dud rate" -- higher than 2.35%.
Russia, Ukraine and the United States did not sign the treaty, though most NATO nations did. Brig. Gen. Ryder declined to say Thursday if Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had any conversations with NATO allies to address their concerns about sending cluster munitions to Ukraine."They can injure or kill people who are just going about their daily lives -- children playing in playgrounds, people tending to their land," Weir told ABC News.
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