The US is expected to announce it will give Ukraine one of the most widely banned weapons in the world: cluster munitions. Kyiv has been angling for the devastating anti-infantry weapons for months. Cluster munitions come in bomb, shell and rocket form. They break up over their target, littering a wide area with smaller bombs which explode at ground level. They would make short work of Russia’s human wave tactics and help to clear entrenched positions for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. But the long-term risks are extraordinary. The smaller bombs often fail to explode, meaning that years later children can still be maimed and killed by the cursed things. It’s estimated that more than 56,500 civilians have been killed by cluster munitions since World War Two.
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