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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Biden administration will provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday, vowing the U.S. will not leave Ukraine defenseless and asserting that Kyiv has promised to use the controversial bombs carefully.
The decision comes on the eve of the NATO summit in Lithuania, where President Joe Biden is likely to face questions from allies on why the U.S. would send a weapon into Ukraine that more than two-thirds of alliance members have banned because it has a track record for causing many civilian casualties. And it was met with divided reactions from Congress, as some Democrats criticized the plan while some Republicans backed it.
The munitions -- which are bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets -- are seen by the U.S. as a way to get Kyiv critically needed ammunition to help bolster its offensive and push through Russian front lines. U.S. leaders debated the thorny issue for months, before Biden made the final decision this week.
Sullivan defended the decision, saying the U.S. will send a version of the munition that has a reduced "dud rate," meaning fewer of the smaller bomblets fail to explode. The unexploded rounds, which often litter battlefields and populated civilian areas, cause unintended deaths. U.S. officials have said the U.S. will provide thousands of the rounds, but provided no specific numbers.
"We recognize the cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance," he told a White House briefing. "This is why we've deferred the decision for as long as we could.