Putin describes the delivery of cluster bombs as “criminal” and warns of a “reciprocal” response to their use

President of Russia Vladimir Putin, marked this Sunday as “criminal” delivery of cluster bombs to Ukraine and noted that while Moscow “has not used them for now”, it reserves the right to “retaliate” in case Kiev uses them in the context of a war launched in February 2022.

“The use of cluster bombs was described by the US administration itself as a crime. I think that’s the way to behave,” Putin said in an interview with Russian television channel Rossiya 1.

“I want to say that Russia has sufficient stocks of various types of cluster munitions. Until now, we have not done that, we have not used them and we have not had that need, despite the well-known shortage for some time,” he said, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

Thus, he emphasized that “if they use them (against Russian forces)”, Moscow “reserves the right to reciprocal answers”before asserting that the supply of cluster munitions to Kiev stems from the fact that they are “generally suffering from a shortage of ammunition”.

“Let me recall that the Ukrainian army consumes between 5,000 and 6,000 155-caliber shells every day of hostilities, while the United States produces 15,000 of these shells per month,” he asserted. “They don’t have enough and Europe no longer has enough, but they haven’t found anything better to suggest the use of cluster bombs”settled down.

US President Joe Biden last week defended the decision to deliver cluster bombs to Ukraine as necessary for Kiev’s war effort and because “This war is about ammunition”. “This is a war over ammunition and they are running out of ammunition,” he said.

For his part, the commander of the joint forces operation Tavria, Oleksander Tarnavski, said on Wednesday that the Ukrainian army has already received the cluster bombs promised by the United States administration and, although he clarified that they have not yet been used, they could “radically change the course of the war.”

The USA, Ukraine and Russia have not signed the convention to ban these bombs, which explode above the target, dispersing a large number of smaller explosives. Much of it does not explode, but remains a threat for years.