White House confirms its readiness to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said this during a press briefing in Washington, D.C., an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“At first, we base our security assistance decision on Ukraine's needs on the ground, and Ukraine needs artillery to sustain its offensive and defensive operations,”

He noted that the United States has provided Ukraine with a "historic amount" of unitary artillery rounds and is ramping up domestic production of these rounds. "But this process will continue to take time, and it will be critical to provide Ukraine with a bridge of supplies while our domestic production is ramped up," the White House representative explained.

Sullivan emphasized that Russia had been using cluster munitions since the start of the full-scale invasion, with high dud or failure rates of between 30 and 40%.

"In this environment, Ukraine has been requesting cluster munitions in order to defend its own sovereign territory. The cluster munitions that we would provide have dud rates far below what Russia is providing not higher than 2.5%," he noted.

In this regard, Sullivan confirmed that the United States is closely coordinating with Ukraine, which is "committed to post conflict demining efforts to mitigate any potential harm to civilians." And this will be necessary, the U.S. National Security Advisor emphasized.

"Because of Russia's widespread use of cluster munitions, we will have to continue to assist Ukraine with demining efforts," he noted.

According to a White House official, the US deferred the decision to provide cluster munitions as long as they could because of the risk of harm from unexploded ordnance. However, Sullivan noted, there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops launch a new offensive.

As reported, according to the media, the new package of security assistance to Ukraine will total $800 million.