The Pentagon says that cluster bombs have been sent to Ukraine.

WASHINGTON:  The United States has sent cluster bombs to Ukraine, the Pentagon said Thursday in Washington.

The US sees the munitions, which are bombs that open in the air and let out a lot of smaller bomblets, as a way to give Kyiv the ammunition it desperately needs to help its attack and push through the Russian front lines.

The tough issue was talked about by US leaders for months before President Joe Biden made the final choice last week.

US leaders have said that they will send a form of the weapon with a lower “dud rate,” which means that fewer of the smaller bomblets will fail to go off.

The unexploded rounds that are often left on battlefields and in residential areas cause deaths that were not meant to happen.

US sources said that their country will send thousands of the rounds, but they didn’t say how many.

The head of operations for the Joint staff, Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, told reporters on Thursday that cluster munitions have been sent to Ukraine.

“But it wasn’t clear if Ukrainian troops had used them yet. Biden said it was “very hard” to decide to give the projectiles because they have a history of killing people.

Over 120 countries around the world, but not the US, Russia, or Ukraine, have joined an international agreement that makes it illegal to make cluster bombs and discourages their use.

During the war, both Moscow and Kyiv used the weapons, and Ukrainian regional officials have often said that Russian troops used them to target civilians.

Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Biden for the US military aid and said that sending controversial cluster bombs to Ukraine would help it fight Russia.

During the NATO meeting in Lithuania, where Western countries promised more weapons and ammunition to fight Russia’s invasion, the two leaders met.