US President Joe Biden has made the "difficult" decision to deliver cluster munitions to Ukraine after consultation with "allies and partners," his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Friday.
"We will not leave Ukraine defenceless," he said, as he explained US motives to supply more arms to Kiev.
Kiev had asked for cluster bombs, and was committed to demining efforts in the future, Sullivan said. He added that demining would be necessary whether the US supplied cluster bombs or not, because Russia has been using cluster bombs since the start of the invasion in February last year.
"We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance, this is why we deferred the decision as long as we could," he said.
Kiev has been asking for cluster munitions for some time to fend off Russia's invasion. The cluster munitions are part of a new military aid package for Ukraine worth $800 million.
Cluster munitions are missiles and bombs that burst in the air over the target, scattering or releasing many small explosive devices known as submunitions.
Critics say a significant percentage of the explosive devices are duds that do not detonate but remain on site as dangerous unexploded ordnance.
Most European Union and NATO countries have signed a treaty to ban cluster munitions, known as the Oslo Convention. The US is not a signatory to the treaty.
The convention, signed by over 100 states, "prohibits all use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions," according to its official website.
Amid earlier reports that the US had made its decision, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva earlier condemned the plan.
"Cluster munition scatter small bomblets over a wide area," said Marta Hurtado, OHCHR spokeswomen. "They kill and maim people years later after the end of a conflict."
Sullivan defended the US decision, saying that the cluster munitions to be supplied to Ukraine would have a "dud rate" far below that of the Russian weapons, meaning they would be less likely to cause harm to civilians after the conflict.
He stressed that Ukraine was using the cluster munitions for defence purposes only, "to defend its sovereign territory."
He added that Kiev had assured the US that the projectiles would not be used in densely populated urban areas and that it would record where the munitions were being used.
When probed about Germany's earlier stance on the deliveries and whether the decision would pose problems for NATO, Sullivan stressed that there were no "cracks" in NATO unity as a result of the US decision. "Quite the contrary: there's deep understanding we believe across the alliance," he said.
Indeed, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier signalled his understanding for the US decision, before it had been officially announced.
"We are faced with a brutal war," he said, noting that both sides are using cluster bombs.
"Russia is using cluster munition to attack, to invade Ukraine. Ukraine is using cluster munition to protect itself against an aggressor," he said.
Stoltenberg said that it is for individual allies to decide on what weapons and equipment to send Ukraine.
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit noted earlier that although Germany has signed the treaty to ban the weapons, it also understood why the US would take such a measure.
"We are sure that our US friends did not take the decision to supply the respective munitions lightly," Hebestreit said.
"Ukraine uses munitions to protect its own civilian population," Hebestreit added. "So we should also remember that Russia has already used cluster munitions on a large scale in a war of aggression against Ukraine that violates international law."
The Pentagon did not disclose further details on when the deliveries would happen, or on the quantity of the deliveries.
The US says it has hundreds of thousands of the projectiles in stock.
