ISTANBUL: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday (Jul 7) entered crunch talks with Türkiye’s leader after securing a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington’s decision to deliver the controversial weapons – banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine – dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which enters its 500th day on Saturday.
Zelenskyy has been travelling across Europe and working the phones trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine’s allies had hoped.
“Without long-range weapons, it is difficult not only to fulfil an offensive mission, it is difficult to conduct a defensive operation, to be honest,” Zelenskyy told reporters while hopping between Bratislava, Prague and Istanbul on Friday.
US President Joe Biden’s decision to approve the delivery of cluster munitions provides Ukraine with weapons capable of dispersing multiple small explosives over an area covering several football fields.
AFP teams on the ground have seen both Ukraine and Russia use their existing stocks of the weapons, whose use humanitarian groups strongly condemn.
They warn that many bomblets go undetonated, potentially endangering civilians for years to come.
Defending the US move, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan argued there was “a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory”.
Russian officials issued no immediate response.
Zelensky has been also pushing hard for membership of NATO, arguing that Ukraine had turned into Europe’s last line of defence against Russia’s aggression.
The White House said membership would come in the “not too distant future”, but not at next week’s summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Kyiv “still has further steps that it needs to take before membership”, Sullivan said.
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