In response to remarks made by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby during a July 9 appearance on ABC’s Sunday broadcast, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the Russian embassy in Washington issued a statement charging that the Biden Administration, in deciding to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, knows that it is committing war crimes and effectively admitted as much. Kirby, the embassy statement said, “overtly stated that civilians would fall victim to cluster-type weapons. According to the perverted view of the White House representative, this does less harm than the actions of Russia.”
“If there is any logic behind the Administration’s decision to transfer cluster munitions, it boils down to ‘it won’t get any worse.’ The United States is ready to destroy life far from its own borders with the hands of Ukrainians,” the statement concluded. “What is it all for? Only for the sake of an unattainable dream of the strategic defeat of the Russian Federation, which defends its people and its land. We fight Kiev criminals who embrace the Azov terrorists, while the United States is helping Ukrainian Nazis commit inhuman acts.”
Kirby claimed that Ukraine will seek to limit the impact of the bombs off the battlefield and said that keeping Russia from winning the war there will be the greatest thing the U.S. can do to protect non-combatants. “I think we can all agree that more civilians have been and will continue to be killed by Russian forces—whether it’s cluster munitions, drones, missile attacks or just frontal assaults—than will likely be hurt by the use of these cluster munitions fired at Russian positions inside Ukrainian territory,” he said.
