Ukraine has welcomed the Biden administration’s forthcoming decision to provide it with cluster munitions as part of an arms package likely to be approved later on Friday, saying it needs “weapons, more weapons, and more weapons, including cluster munitions” if it is to defeat Russia.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the outcome of the conflict begun by Moscow last year directly depended on the volume of arms Kyiv received.
“In the great bloody war which has been ongoing for more than 16 months, and which will predetermine the future of the world … the number of weapons matters. So, weapons, more weapons, and more weapons, including cluster munitions,” he said on Friday.
According to the Washington Post, Joe Biden has controversially approved the delivery of cluster bombs that will be drawn down from US Department of Defense stocks. The move gets round US law prohibiting the transfer of the weapons if they have a failure rate greater than 1%.
Cluster bombs break apart in the air and release large numbers of smaller bomblets across a wide area. The bomblets do not always explode, posing a risk afterwards to civilians.
There is concern in Washington and other western capitals at the slow progress of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive, as the war approaches its 500th day on Saturday. Ukrainian commanders say their dug-in Russian opponents have superiority in artillery and heavy tanks, limiting the ability of their troops to go forward.
Earlier Podolyak accused Human Rights Watch (HRW) of “spinelessness”, “pettiness” and “absolute immorality” after it released a report accusing both Kyiv and Moscow of using cluster bombs that killed civilians.
The New York-based non-governmental group has urged the White House not to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine, warning they are likely to endanger civilians for years to come.
Writing on Twitter, Podolyak suggested the report was the latest example of “bothsides-ism”, when well-meaning outsiders failed to take account of the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine had little choice but to fight for its survival, he said.
“Just think about it: absolutely insane Russian thugs are invading Ukraine, unleashing a brutal genocidal war, killing civilians, organising public executions, raping women, abducting children, attacking major cities with cruise missiles.
“At the same time, the ‘human rights organisation’ stands with the notebook and accuses … the Ukrainian people of not disarming themselves sufficiently. It turns out that it is the ‘bad Ukrainians’ who are using weapons they should not be using, standing in their cities, not sleeping in an open field,” he posted on Thursday.
Podolyak further implied that “Russian agents” had invaded “various global ‘offices’”, with an agenda that failed to make a moral distinction between the actions of Kyiv and Moscow. “Is this a joke? Is this a prank?” he asked.
Ukraine’s criticism of HRW follows a similar row last year involving Amnesty International. In August, Amnesty claimed the Ukrainian military had put civilians at risk by basing troops in residential buildings in urban areas. That made it more likely the Russians would target them, injuring civilians, it said.
Kremlin state media gleefully published the findings. The head of Amnesty’s Ukraine operations, Oksana Pokalchuk, resigned in protest. Ukrainian government officials pointed out that if the Ukrainian army left cities, the Russians would sweep in unopposed. Zelenskiy said Amnesty was guilty of “immoral selectivity”.
The HRW report mostly concentrates on alleged cluster bomb use by Ukraine. Researchers interviewed civilians living in the city of Izium, in the north-east Kharkiv region, which the Russian army captured in April after a month-long battle. It said at least eight civilians were wounded in Ukrainian attacks, and 15 wounded.
Ukraine’s defence ministry told HRW it did not use cluster bombs in the area when it was under Russian occupation. The report acknowledges that in one case Russian forces were living in a large building in a residential neighbourhood, less than 150 metres from where a Ukrainian woman was killed.
Russia, Ukraine and the US have all declined to sign up to the convention on cluster munitions, which prohibits the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of the weapons, and has been signed by more than 120 countries. HRW said in its report: “Regardless, the use of cluster munitions in areas with civilians makes an attack indiscriminate in violation of international humanitarian law, and possibly a war crime.”
The White House said on Thursday that providing cluster munitions to Ukraine was under “active consideration”.
“Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years,” said Mary Wareham, the acting arms director at HRW. “Both sides should immediately stop using them and not try to get more of these indiscriminate weapons.”
