Special advisor to Zaluzhnyi says U.S. should provide more lethal artillery rounds to Ukraine

That’s according to Dan Rice, a special advisor to Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, who spoke with CNN, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

“I think it’s a political decision, not a military decision. I think the military right now would give them what they need,” Rice told CNN when asked whether the U.S. is going to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine’s forces.

He added that the State Department “obviously weighs in on that.”

Noting that Ukraine definitely needs ATACMS long-range missiles for HIMARS launchers, Dan Rice stressed that the Ukrainian Army also needs dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM).

He believes the U.S. is currently giving Ukraine munitions that it would not provide its own troops if they needed to fight Russia in combat.

Asked why the U.S. should give Ukraine advanced “cluster” munitions that many believe could hurt civilians, Dan Rice elaborated that Ukraine forces “are obviously not going to target their own civilians,” only firing them at Russian military targets, and that this is precisely the type of munitions that the U.S. had initially planned to use if ever required to defend Europe against Russian invasion.

“This is a game changer. It is five to 15 times more lethal,” the special advisor stressed.

“It’s a moral imperative to give them the most lethal firepower,” Rice said. “Most people don’t realize that this war is a 1,200-mile front, which basically is from here in New York to Miami.”

“The Ukrainians only have a couple hundred artillery tubes, the Russians have thousands, and they’re firing all night into the Ukrainian lines. This can’t go on forever, just from a human standpoint. They can’t sustain that,” Dan Rice stressed.

Memo. DPICM is an artillery shell that separates prior to the target and drops 88 submunitions on the target in a tight area.  DPICM ammunition has been in use by the U.S. military since the 1970s.

The U.S. is not party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The countries that are most at risk from a large-scale Russian conventional invasion did not sign it either, according to Dan Rice. These include Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, as well as Ukraine.