At the end of 2022, Turkey began to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine. Before that, Kyiv had been asking the Biden administration for several months to no avail for this type of weapon.. This was reported to Foreign Policy by current and former US and European officials familiar with the decision.. Cluster bombs are powerful yet controversial weapons for destroying Russian tanks and destroying enemy troops..

A NATO ally began shipping the first batches of so-called Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) in November 2022. They were made during the Cold War era under a co-production agreement with the United States.. The weapon is designed to destroy tanks by bursting into smaller submunitions that can remain on the battlefield for years if not immediately burst.. Each munition scatters about 88 bombs. The United States is legally prohibited from exporting them..

The move, which Turkey has been trying to hush up for months, also highlights Ankara's tough policy throughout the conflict: supporting Ukraine with Bayraktar TB2 strike drones that helped stop Russia's advance on Kyiv, and playing a diplomatic broker for the UN in a deal to export grain from Ukrainian ports; buying Russian weapons for themselves and incurring the wrath of NATO in the process. Meanwhile, it is not yet clear whether Turkish ground-to-ground weapons were used in combat..

“After the US denied [Ukraine] access to cluster munitions, Turkey was the only place they could get them.. This demonstrates that even though Turkey has played along with Russia in some aspects, it has become a really important support for Ukraine militarily,” said the source who informed this and wished to remain anonymous..

Neither the Turkish embassy in Washington nor the Ukrainian defense ministry responded to a Foreign Policy request for comment..

But Turkey's supply of cluster munitions demonstrates the significant role Ankara has played in supplying weapons to Ukraine to thwart Russia at critical junctures in the war since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion in February 2022..

Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones helped stop Russian troops moving into Kyiv in the early days of the war and reportedly helped Ukraine sink the Russian cruiser Moskva, which was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet.. Turkish analysts believe that Turkey is secretly transferring drones from the Corlu airbase near the Bayraktar TB2 plant, from where weapons are delivered to Poland and moved to Ukraine.

Although Turkey did not share information on the number of cluster munitions in its stockpiles, the Ankara-based Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation produced both 155mm cluster munitions (they are used in many systems of NATO countries) and 122mm, familiar to the Soviet, Russian.

But the move is a kind of U-turn for Turkey, as it has promised the international disarmament community that it will not use this type of weapon.. In a letter sent to the president of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international organization headquartered in Geneva, in October 2021 and received by Foreign Policy, Turkey insisted that it had not used, produced, imported or transferred cluster munitions since.

“Turkey truly shares the humanitarian considerations that guide efforts to limit the indiscriminate use of weapons, including cluster munitions,” Sadiq Arslan, Turkish Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, wrote in a letter to the Convention..

However, supporters of the US provision of cluster bombs insisted that this would be the most effective way to destroy unfortified and uncovered Russian trench lines in open Donbass.. And this need is exacerbated, according to sources, by the fact that stocks of high-explosive artillery shells in the United States are already running low..

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“Every fourth [artillery] shell you kill someone. I believe that DPICM will show a result, perhaps 20 times better. Therefore, with each shot you will have 10 dead invaders. You will see the efficiency and effectiveness of DPICM, and it will also affect the morale of the Russians,” said Dan Rice, President of Thayer Leadership, a leadership development organization, also an adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian military.

But while Erdogan has faced a controversial re-election fight this year due to an inflation-ridden economy, he has stuck to a consistent policy during Russia's war in Ukraine, experts say.. He acted as an economic friend of the Kremlin while allying with other Black Sea states and other NATO members in a military fight against Russia.. While the Kremlin was frustrated with Turkish military supplies to Ukraine, Turkey simultaneously expanded its economic ties with Russia, countering efforts by the United States and other NATO allies to isolate the Russian economy from global markets.. Turkey has suspended Finland and Sweden's attempts to join the NATO alliance after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, angering other NATO allies.

" But while Turkey's position isn't perfect, it's also not bad, as it provides economic access to global markets and breathing room.. It's very important to him.. This is a stable status quo for Putin,” says Soner Chagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute..

Some in the U.S. Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff backed the move after intense lobbying from Congress and senior Ukrainian officials, including Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Gen. Valeriy Zalozhny. But sending the weapons was too much of a hurdle after U.S. President Joe Biden announced last year that the United States would no longer manufacture, buy, or replace anti-personnel mines, or use them anywhere outside of the Korean Peninsula.. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US military has not used cluster munitions in combat, except for a single incident in Yemen more than a decade ago..

Russia, which is also not a party to the UN Convention on Cluster Munitions, has been actively using these weapons since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year: preliminary figures cited by Human Rights Watch show at least 689 civilian casualties from air attacks.. Ukrainian forces used cluster munition rockets at least twice.

Progressive Democrats in Congress pressured Biden to take further action to ban the use of this type of weapon.. In a letter to the White House in December 2022, led by Democratic Representative Bill Keating, 10 House and Senate lawmakers urged Biden to start destroying US stockpiles of cluster munitions..

“If the United States used cluster munitions today, we would be criticized, because we condemned the Russians for their use in Ukraine. We must lead a global effort to deprive the world of these weapons, not continue to stockpile them,” Keating and Biden’s Congressional allies wrote..

This weapon also has a difficult history in the US military and around the world.. In a briefing on lessons learned during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division called the DPICM a "

DPICM ammunition has been called a Cold War relic. Since that time, the Pentagon has been working on developing a so-called alternative warhead for light multiple launch rocket systems fired with tungsten fragments instead of explosive submunitions..

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But Ukrainian lobbying has intensified as heavy artillery clashes with Russian troops have already begun to wear down some of the barrels of US and NATO-provided 155mm howitzer guns.. Cluster munitions, which can be fired from standard artillery pieces, are about 5 to 10 times deadlier than standard high-explosive shells that the United States has already sent to Ukraine.. Citing wear and tear on artillery batteries, Ukraine has also asked for so-called BONUS cluster rounds from Sweden and small diameter bombs that can be launched by HIMARS, which the United States has agreed to send but has not yet provided..

The US Department of Defense has about three million cluster rounds in its inventory dating back to the end of the Cold War, when the US military envisaged the use of anti-personnel mines to stop the advance of Soviet tanks into mainland Europe..

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Turkey, like the United States, is not a member of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. However, experts fear that the clean-up headache that DPICM could cause could exacerbate the mess with the mines and cluster bombs that the Russian military has already left on Ukrainian soil..

Unlike traditional anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions do not stack neatly in rows that can be easily inspected and defused..

Most often, during the shot, they scatter randomly.. Experts are concerned that, due to their small size, they are too dangerous for mass destruction and civilians may mistakenly pick them up, as happened during the 2006 Lebanon war..

“Ukraine already has a huge problem, and by introducing these weapons, it only exacerbates it. As a result, they will find themselves in a situation where pollution will be like lasagna: ammunition will layer over time,” Khiznay believes..