Russia has cluster munitions for tit-for-tat: Putin

MOSCOW, July 16 (AFP/AP): Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country had enough cluster munitions to answer if Ukraine was to use the weapons, in an interview published Sunday.
Ukraine started receiving cluster weapons from the United States, a move that sparked concerns due to the long-term risk posed to civilians by bomblets that fail to explode.
"Russia has a sufficient stockpile of various kinds of cluster munitions," Putin told a state-television journalist.
The controversial weapons can disperse up to several hundred small explosive charges, which can remain unexploded in the ground.
"If they are used against us, we reserve ourselves the right to tit-for-tat actions," Putin said.
He added Russia had not yet used the weapons despite a "certain shortage of munitions at some point."
Human Rights Watch and Ukrainian forces have accused Russia of already using cluster munitions on the battlefield.
They are banned by numerous countries-notably in Europe-that are signatories to a 2008 Oslo Convention, to which neither Russia, the United States nor Ukraine are parties.
Humanitarian groups have strongly condemned the US decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden said the decision was "very difficult" but stressed Ukraine needed extra ammunition to refill its depleted stocks.
Fighting intensifies at multiple
points along front line
Fighting has intensified at multiple points along the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line. Ukrainian forces are making steady progress along the northern and southern flanks of the wrecked city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces have been occupying since May.
Battles are also raging along the southern front in Zaporizhzhia, where Ukrainian forces are making minimal gains and coming up against formidable Russian fortifications.
Hanna Maliar, Ukraine's deputy minister of defense, recently claimed that Kyiv's forces had destroyed six Russian ammunition depots in the space of 24 hours, a remark that hinted at Ukrainian tactics.
"We inflict effective, painful and precise blows and bleed the occupier, for whom the lack of ammunition and fuel will sooner or later become fatal," she said.
Britain's top military officer says that is Ukraine's first goal: starve Russian units of supplies and reinforcements by attacking logistic and command centers in the rear, including with U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Ukraine is also trying to stretch Russia's resources by simultaneously badgering multiple points along the front line, said Admiral Tony Radakin, chief of the U.K. defense staff, earlier this month.
Ukraine's full-scale offensive will come, he said, when one point on the front line collapses. Kyiv's reserve troops can then pour through the breach.