MOSCOW: Russian Minister for Defence Affairs Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that his country would be forced to use “similar” weapons if the US provided cluster bombs to Kyiv.
Washington announced earlier that it would provide Kyiv with cluster munitions. The cluster bombs are banned by more than a hundred countries, including Japan and Britain.
Moscow-Washington
Sergei Shoigu was quoted as saying that Moscow was in possession of cluster bombs but had so far abstained from using them in its combat campaign. However, Washington has previously blamed Moscow for using cluster munitions in the Ukraine war and said they have had a failure rate of up to forty percent. The US says the cluster munitions it is supplying to Kyiv have a failure rate of less than 2.35 percent.
“In the event that Washington provides cluster munitions to Kyiv, the Russian army will be forced to use similar weapons against forces of Ukraine as a reply,” the Defence Minister said.
“It must be noted that Moscow has cluster munitions in service… for all occasions and are much more effective than American ones…,” the Minister claimed. He maintained that Russia’s army was taking steps to protect its forces from such weapons, Reuters reported.
A pact banning the use of cluster bombs has been joined by over 120 nations that agreed not to produce, use, transfer or store the arms and to clear them after they have been used. The US, Ukraine, and Russia are among those countries who have not inked the pact. The majority of NATO nations have also signed on to the cluster munitions ban, some of those countries nearest to Russia like Latvia, Estonia, Romania, and Poland.
Several countries including Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom opposed the use of Cluster Bombs and said that they should not be provided to Kyiv.
