Washington’s delayed decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, a controversial weapon banned by many US allies, is exposing the risks of depending on a distant and sometime slow-acting power with its own interests primarily at heart.
Since the Ukraine war’s beginning 18 months ago, the US has spearheaded a massive Western campaign of military aid to Kiev, yet it often makes decisions in reaction to Russia’s largely predictable moves on the battlefield.
Advanced air defense weaponry, for instance, was supplied only after Russian planes and drones had bombarded Ukrainian military positions and towns.
Supplies of advanced, longer-range artillery like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) only came after Russia began to hit Ukrainian positions from further and further distances.
Ukraine is now lobbying heavily for fighter jets, but so far to no avail due to concerns it would escalate the conflict in unpredictable ways. Moscow has repeatedly threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict.
Over the weekend, US President Joe Biden decided to supply Ukraine with cluster bombs, which are launched in flocks over a wide area from a single shell. Ukrainian officials had requested them more than seven months ago for use in a planned counteroffensive campaign.
The Biden administration refused the request and the Ukrainians launched the broad counterattacks on Russian forces anyway without them. Progress on the ground has been slow and Ukrainians are beginning to publicly complain.
The delayed cluster munitions supply decision reflects the sometimes frustrating disconnect between Washington’s decision-makers and Kiev’s commanders on the ground over how best to prosecute the war.
Critics say the US, by far the main supplier of weapons to Ukraine, is sometimes slow in anticipating shifting battlefield necessities for fear of seeming the aggressor in a war Russia instigated.
In this case, Ukraine wanted the cluster bombs as part of an arsenal to use in its current campaign to help drive Russian troops eastward and out of the country.
Under pressure to show military progress to impress its allies, Kiev launched the offensive not only without the cluster munitions but also in the face of dwindling artillery ammunition and the lack of air power support it desires.
Biden seemed apologetic when he announced the cluster bomb decision over the weekend. He suggested it is meant not to become a permanent part of Ukraine’s military kit, but rather a temporary supplement to its dwindling supplies of artillery shells.
“It was a very difficult decision on my part,” Biden said. “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. And so, what I finally did – I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to not permanently but to allow for this transition period.”
Biden’s stated reluctance apparently aimed to mitigate both domestic and foreign concerns about the weapons’ deployment. In February 2022, Biden officials decried reports of Russia’s use of cluster munitions. “We have seen the reports. If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime,” said then-spokesperson Jen Psaki.
The next month, Linda Greenfield-Thomas, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told the General Assembly that she had seen reports of Russia moving cluster bombs, “which are banned under the Geneva Convention” into Ukraine.
In reality, neither the US, Ukraine nor Russia prohibits the use of cluster munitions. Eastern European NATO allies along Russia’s border also embrace the weapon, while several NATO allies to the West prohibit them – hence Biden’s message that the shipment is a temporary decision to fill a logistical hole.
More than 120 countries have banned cluster bomb use. Last week, Human Rights Watch, the international rights monitor, decried the use of cluster bombs by both Ukrainians and Russians.
“Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions that caused deaths and serious injury to civilians. Russian forces have extensively used cluster munitions, causing many civilian deaths,” HRW said in its report.
“Both countries should stop using these inherently indiscriminate weapons, and no country should supply cluster munitions because of their foreseeable danger to civilians,” HRW concluded.
However, Ukraine views the Biden administration’s decision as more than a temporary fix, said Ryan Brobst, a research analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based lobbying outfit.
“Cluster munitions are more effective than unitary artillery shells because they inflict damage over a wider area,” said Brobst. “This is important for Ukraine as they try to clear heavily-fortified Russian positions.”
Ukrainian officials, hoping to soothe allied concerns, pledged to only use them on military targets and not to drop them on Russia.
The US military possesses as many as three million cluster munitions, according to reports. The Ukrainians will fire them via 155-millimeter artillery shells that are already widely in use rather than dropping them from jet bombers, the more advanced method.
That’s because the US and its allies have supplied artillery pieces in the hundreds to Ukraine but not provided F-16 fighter jets, which are atop Ukraine’s current weaponry wish list.
The Ukrainians also desire new air defense systems and more advanced tanks, which have been promised but not yet delivered, according to reports
Biden’s cluster bomb decision coincided with a sudden outburst of pessimism from Ukrainian officials about the course of the war.
Ukraine’s usually upbeat President Volodymyr Zelensky sourly told reporters that allied help was welcome but the tardiness of actual weaponry shipments has done harm to the war effort.
“I’m grateful to the US as the leaders of our support,” Zelensky said. “But I told them that we would like to start our counteroffensive earlier, and we need all the weapons and materiel for that. Why? Simply because if we start later, it will go slower.”
The delays reportedly allowed Russia more time to prepare its defenses. “Everyone understood that if the counteroffensive unfolds later, then a bigger part of our territory will be mined,” Zelensky said. “We give our enemy the time and possibility to place more mines and prepare their defensive lines.”
General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, meanwhile said Ukraine’s allies have not supplied him with enough advanced weapons to effectively push the offensive.
“Without being fully supplied, these plans are not feasible at all,” he told the Washington Post last month. “But they are being carried out. Yes, maybe not as fast as the participants in the show, the observers, would like, but that is their problem.”
Ukrainian journalist Mykhailo Podolyak delivered an unusually bitter critique of the slow Western response to his country’s military needs. “Every decision has to be literally gnawed out with teeth, wasting months of empty talk,” he wrote on Twitter.
Russia, meanwhile, was critical of Biden’s decision to supply cluster munitions — without, of course, mentioning its own rampant use of the weapon.
“It is an act of desperation and shows weakness against the backdrop of the failure of the much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a written statement.