In an interview that came out on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country has enough cluster bombs. He warned that if Ukraine used the weapons in question, Russia would be able to respond in kind.
Putin’s first response about the US sending cluster bombs to Ukraine was that Russia hadn’t used them in the war in Ukraine so far. There is a lot of evidence that both Russia and Ukraine have used cluster bombs, and after Russian strikes, cluster rounds have been found.
“Until now, we haven’t done this, haven’t used it, and haven’t had a need for it,” he said. Rossiya TV reporter Pavel Zarubin posted excerpts of the interview to his Telegram channel on Sunday, before it was due to air.
On Thursday, the Pentagon said that cluster bombs that the US had sent to Ukraine had gotten there. The US sees the munitions, which are bombs that open in the air and let out a lot of smaller bomblets, as a way to give Kyiv the ammunition it needs to strengthen its attack and push through the Russian front lines.
Before President Joe Biden made the final decision last week, people in power in the US talked about the tough problem for months. Humanitarian groups and some US allies have been against cluster bombs for a long time because the ones used in past wars had a high “dud rate,” which means that they often left behind unexploded bomblets that can hurt civilians long after a fight is over.
Also, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that fighting has “kind of gotten worse” in the east of the country, where Ukrainian and Russian troops are fighting in at least three places. Last month, Kyiv started a counteroffensive to try to take back land that Russia had taken over and take the lead in Russia’s full-scale invasion, which is now in its 17th month.
Maliar said on a social media site that Russian troops had been attacking in the direction of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region for two days straight. She wrote, “We are on the defense.” At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that a Ukrainian counter-offensive to regain land was not working and that attempts to break through Russian defenses had failed.
