Many Countries Banned Cluster Munitions. The U.S. Is Sending Them to Ukraine Anyway.

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For months, President Biden has been wrestling with one of the most vexing questions in the war in Ukraine: whether to risk letting Ukrainian forces run out of the artillery rounds they desperately need to fight Russia, or agree to ship them cluster munitions — widely banned weapons known to cause grievous injury to civilians, especially children. On Friday, the Biden administration announced that it would send the weapons, which have been outlawed by many of Washington's closest allies. David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, tells the story behind the president’s contentious decision. Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Taverny-Sea, and this is The Daily.
0:14.8	On Friday, the Biden administration quietly announced a major escalation in the kinds
0:20.3	of weapons that it was giving to Ukraine, sending a type of bomb so devastating that it's
0:25.9	been banned by over a hundred countries.
0:29.4	Today, my colleague David Sanger tells me the story behind the president's controversial
0:35.0	decision on cluster bombs.
0:45.8	It's Tuesday, July 11th.
0:52.7	David, nice to see you.
0:54.3	Great to see you, Sabrina.
0:56.0	Where are we catching you this morning?
0:57.4	I'm in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the start of the NATO summit.
1:02.8	President Biden is arriving here imminently and has two days of meetings with all of the
1:08.4	leaders of NATO.
1:09.6	Okay, so you're in Vilnius at the NATO summit waiting for Biden to arrive.
1:14.0	I'm assuming he'll be facing some questions about what his administration announced last
1:18.6	week.
1:19.6	News that, honestly, I found pretty astonishing when it broke on Friday at the very end of
1:24.4	the day, which of course is usually a sign that they don't want it to get a lot of attention.
1:28.2	Explain the Biden administration's announcement.
1:31.0	Tell me about it.
1:32.1	Well, it got a lot of attention, Sabrina, no matter how they timed it.
1:36.3	And the announcement was that the United States is sending cluster bombs to Ukraine.
	...

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