President Joe Biden defended what he called his “very difficult decision” to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine in an interview broadcast on Sunday, saying the war-torn country “needs” the weapons controversial to combat the invasion of Russian troops.
“It took me a while to be convinced to do it. But the main thing is that they have the weapons to stop the Russians now from their – to stop them from stopping the Ukrainian offensive through these areas – or that they didn’t have it. And I think they needed it,” Biden said in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
The administration’s announcement on Friday that it would send cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a US military assistance program was welcomed by some of Biden’s Democratic colleagues, who noted the warheads ground-to-ground, which scatter small munitions or bombs over large areas, can explode after battle and sometimes injure or kill innocent people.
The weapons have been banned in more than 100 countries, and the White House suggested last year that Russia’s use of weapons in Ukraine was a potential war crime.
Biden said the move was needed now because the Ukrainian military was running out of ammunition, stressing it was a temporary measure.
“The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition, the ammunition that they used to call them 155 millimeter guns. It’s a – it’s an ammunition war, and they’re running out of those – those ammunition, and we’re And so what I finally did, took the recommendation of the Ministry of Defence, not permanently, but to allow [their use] in this period of transition,” he said in the interview, conducted on Friday.
Biden said the bombs would not be used in civilian areas.
In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said weapons were crucial to his country’s defense. “We need it to win this war,” Yermak said.
While some Republicans criticized Biden for sending the guns, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said it was the right thing to do.
“Russia is dropping cluster bombs on Ukraine, the country of Ukraine, with impunity right now,” McCaul said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“All the Ukrainians and Zelenskyy are asking for is to give them the same weapons that the Russians have to use in their own country against the Russians who are in their own country. They don’t want them to be used in Russia. They want to use them as self-defense against the Russians in their own country, Ukraine. I don’t see anything wrong with that,” McCaul said.
“These weapons would be a game-changer. They are very effective, and particularly hit the flanks of the troops inside Ukraine. They would be a game-changer in the counter-offensive,” he added.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, however, told CNN that “cluster bombs should never be used. That’s crossing a line.”
Lee urged Biden to reconsider “because these are very dangerous bombs.” Asked if she thought it might be a war crime if the administration didn’t change its position, Lee replied, “What I think is that we risk losing our moral leadership.”
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com