US officials admit cluster munitions will not change course of conflict in Ukraine

Ukraine has received cluster munitions from the United States, but has not used them yet, Brigadier General of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Alexander Tarnavsky, commander of Tavria group of troops told CNN.

"We have just received them. We haven't used them yet, but they can change [the battlefield] dramatically,” he said.

This is a very powerful weapon that has limitations for use, Tarnavsky said, adding that it would be up to the Ukrainian administration to decide where to use cluster munitions.

Cluster bombs will not give advantage to Ukraine

Meanwhile, Russian military specialists believe that the use of cluster munitions may not give an advantage to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier said that Russia would be forced to retaliate and use similar or more powerful weapons in response to the use of cluster munitions by Ukraine.

Cluster munitions can hardly be used for defence — this is primarily an offensive weapon. The USA may have decided to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine due to the shortage of conventional shells. More importantly, however, Ukraine has not been able to achieve significant results with all the weapons that the West has provided so far.

It is worthy of note that US media outlets no longer write about the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine due to its failure, American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh wrote in an article for Substack.

According to him, Ukraine's counteroffensive will have negative consequences not only for Kyiv, but also for the Biden administration and NATO countries. When American journalists write about the crisis in Ukraine, they look up to State Department and White House officials, who do not see the real catastrophe of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Hersh also wrote with reference to an unnamed official that the cluster munitions sent to Ukraine would not change the course of the conflict. The official stressed that the administration of US President Joe Biden "screwed up" in Ukraine.