Cluster Munitions – How Will Putin Respond? – The Biden administration is preparing to provide cluster munitions – a controversial form of weapon regulated by the Convention on Cluster Munitions treaty – to Ukraine in an upcoming weapons package.
CBS News broke the story on July 6, revealing that U.S. officials confirmed that plans were underway to provide the weapons to assist Ukraine’s ongoing counter-offensive against Russian forces.
Neither the United States nor Russia signed the 2008 cluster munitions treaty, which prevents signatories from stockpiling, using, or making the weapons. It means that, while the White House’s expected decision is likely to cause outrage, it won’t technically be illegal.
According to the unnamed officials, the package is expected to be worth $800 million.
What Are Cluster Munitions?
A cluster munition, also known as a cluster bomb, is a kind of weapon that carries submunitions. Each canister can hold as many as several hundred smaller munitions, meaning that when one munition is dropped, it releases potentially hundreds more smaller bombs.
The munitions are designed to open at a height, meaning that the bombs scatter as they fall to the ground. Each smaller bomb can be timed to explode when they are closer to the ground or its intended target, which spreads large quantities of shrapnel across as wide a distance as possible. Cluster munitions cause substantially more damage than many traditional weapons, causing greater damage to personnel and even armored vehicles.
While no official announcement has been made, the United States has a stockpile of dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs) which were phased out in 2016. If the White House is, in fact, preparing to deliver cluster munitions to Ukraine, it is possible that the remaining stockpile of DPICMs could be headed to Ukraine.
It is also possible, however, that the United States will divert negative attention away from the story – or attempt to quell talk from the Kremlin that the U.S. is escalating the conflict by supplying the weapons – by enabling third parties to send the munitions instead.
Putin Can Hardly Talk
If the plans come to fruition, the Kremlin is unlikely to be pleased by the news.
It’s hard to say exactly how Russian President Vladimir Putin will react to the news, though based on previous announcements like this – including the news that the United States is paving the way for the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine – we know that Russia is likely to issue yet more threats in response.
Putin, however, will find it difficult to complain about the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine when the Russian military has relied on cluster munitions throughout the Ukraine war.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
