Nobody interested in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

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I wouldn't be surprised if Lukashenko gets rid of Prigozhin.

Or...those two will form an alliance together against Putin. Apparently they've been buddies for 20 years. That's why Lukashenko was able to talk him out of rebelling.

It'll all explode IMO.

The U.S. is leaning toward providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, and the announcement could come as early next month, two senior U.S. officials said.

A third U.S. official said the U.S. is considering providing dual purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICMs, to Ukraine but declined to provide any timeline for an announcement.

DPICMs are surface-to-surface warheads that explode and disperse multiple small munitions or bombs over wide areas — bringing more widespread destruction than single rounds. The rounds can be shape charges that penetrate armored vehicles, or they can shatter or fragment to be more dangerous and deadly for personnel.

Some human rights groups oppose their use because of concerns that unexploded bomblets, or duds, could explode after battle, potentially injuring or killing innocent civilians.

Ukraine has been asking the U.S. for DPICMs since last year, but the idea has met resistance because of an international treaty that bans the transfer, use and stockpiling of the weapon, called the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The U.S., Ukraine and Russia are not signatories to the treaty, but more than 100 countries are, including many U.S. allies.

Turds will soon be striking the turbine.

Lukashenko is being like those guys in old 1930s comedy movies and cartoons...aiding Putin by putting on a show of grabbing Putin from behind while Putin yells "let me at em .." at Prigozhin...when (like those cartoon characters) Putin has no desire or even power- to beat up on Progozhin- and imprison or kill him like any good strong man would do. So it gives Putin an out.

Prigozhin will soon « disappear » or die « accidentally » in shower.

CIA Director William Burns recently traveled to Ukraine where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukrainian intelligence chiefs, a U.S. official confirmed to NBC News Saturday.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the trip, said Burns had traveled regularly to the eastern European country “since the beginning of Russia’s recent aggression more than a year ago.”

"As with other trips, the director met with his Ukrainian intelligence counterparts and President Zelenskyy, reaffirming the U.S. commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression," the official said.

"As with other trips, the director met with his Ukrainian intelligence counterparts and President Zelenskyy, reaffirming the U.S. commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression," the official said.

The official noted that the trip, first reported by The Washington Post, was before Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a short-lived armed rebellion and marched his troops toward Moscow more than a week ago before he suddenly reversed his decision and announced a deal with the Kremlin.

It had therefore not been a topic of discussion.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence also made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Thursday, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to do so.

Russia has deployed over 180,000 troops to the two major eastern battlefronts, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the eastern grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Cherevatyi called it “a pretty powerful grouping.” He said it included “air assault and mechanized units, units of the Bars combat army reserve, territorial forces” and new Storm Z assault companies, that he said recruited people with criminal records.

Cherevatyi said that there are around 50,000 Russian troops on the Bakhmut front.

The cities of Lyman and Kupyansk are about 100 kilometers apart, north of Bakhmut on Ukraine's eastern front.

Meanwhile, Hanna Maliar, deputy defense minister of Ukraine, reported frequent clashes near Bakhmut. “The situation is changing very rapidly,” Maliar said in a Telegram post. “Control over the same positions can be lost and regained twice a day.”

General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukrainian Land Forces, echoed Maliar's comments in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian online newspaper, on Monday.

“The enemy is trying to transfer units to the most threatening directions for counterattacks, trying to destabilize the situation, cause losses to Ukraine and disrupt the logistics of the defense forces,” Syrskyi said, adding that “the threat of the enemy offensive actions from the side of Bakhmut in the direction of Chasiv Yar remains.”

Chasiv Yar is about 15 kilometers west of Bakhmut.

Syrskyi noted that Russians are “desperately clinging to the positions and strongholds that were once occupied by the Wagnerites,” a reference to the mercenary force that led the Russian offensive around Bakhmut.

Ukrainian forces have been able to stop Russian troops from moving within Bakhmut, he said.

It sounds like a doomsday nightmare: Europe’s largest nuclear power plant stuck in the middle of a war zone, now allegedly wired with explosives ready to spread a radiological catastrophe across the continent.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been a constant source of dread since it was captured by Russia in March 2022 in the early days of its invasion. A drumbeat of warnings from Kyiv and Moscow has grown in recent weeks, crescendoing late Tuesday with each side accusing the other of planning an imminent attack designed to frame its warring rival.

The increasingly drastic warnings have fueled rising concern among residents in southeastern Ukraine and beyond — not least given the destruction of the huge dam that had previously been a source of similar alarm and accusations. But some experts told NBC News that the risk of a widespread radiation leak was low.

“It is actually quite difficult to arrange a significant reactive incident here,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. “Even if you try to blow it up, I don’t think you could spread” the radiation beyond a few hundred yards.

'New evil?'
Ukraine has warned for months that Russia might try to blow up the nuclear plant. But rarely have these warnings been as specific as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was late Tuesday, when he said Russia had placed “objects resembling explosives” on the roof — perhaps intending to blame an attack on Ukraine.

“It is the responsibility of everyone in the world to stop it,” he said, in his latest appeal for more assistance from allies. “No one can stand aside as radiation affects everyone.”

The Kremlin has presented its own version of events.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Wednesday that the Russian-controlled plant was at risk of “sabotage” by Ukraine. The deputy adviser at the Russian energy giant Rosenergoatom, Renat Karchaa, said Ukraine was planning to strike the plant with a tactical ballistic missile tipped with a nuclear waste-filled warhead, Russia's state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.

NBC News has not verified the claims of either side.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has issued regular warnings about the danger of fighting around a nuclear plant. It said in a statement Wednesday that partial inspections had revealed no evidence of mines or other explosives, but that it had not been granted access to the whole site.

It added that no shelling or explosions has been reported recently and the military presence at the site appeared unchanged.

Many in eastern Ukraine have felt increasing panic this week, fueled by a fervent rumor mill on the popular Telegram messaging app, which residents check throughout the night.

The country's deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said Wednesday that emergency services across four regions had been doing days of extra training to cope with "a possible terrorist attack" on the plant.

These fears were hardly tempered last week when local Russian-installed government officials said they had evacuated 1,600 people, including 660 children, from the area around the plant.

Most experts agree that any nuclear power plant should be off-limits in conflict. But some disagree about how bad an explosion at Zaporizhzhia would be in terms of a widespread nuclear disaster.

“If you blow up nuclear fuel, you’re going to get contamination,” said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former commander of Britain's and NATO’s chemical, biological and nuclear defense forces. “You’re not going to get a nuclear explosion, but the fires potentially created could spread contamination, as happened at Chernobyl.”

Zaporizhzhia is more modern than Chernobyl, built in the early 1980s, around 10 years after construction of its infamous cousin began. And de Bretton-Gordon said its far more sturdy design, aimed at withstanding being hit by a jetliner, means the risk would come only from a blast inside the facility itself.

But other experts have said that fundamental differences between the design of two plants means that the risk of widespread radiation contamination is low regardless.

The Zaporizhzhia plant's reactors are housed inside stainless steel containment vessels, which themselves are placed inside walls of thick, reinforced concrete. Unlike Chernobyl, its design does not use graphite, the material that caught fire in the 1986 incident and spread radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Zaporizhzhia’s six reactors “are not at all like the Chernobyl reactor and cannot, CAN NOT, have the same kind of accident,” wrote Cheryl Rofer, a retired nuclear researcher who worked for more than 30 years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S. government facility in New Mexico.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, agreed it was "unlikely that limited Russian sabotage" at Zaporizhzhia "would be able to generate a massive radiological incident."

Perhaps most crucially, all six of Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are currently in cold shutdown, meaning they are far cooler than those in Chernobyl or Fukushima, the plant that melted down following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

One of the biggest secrets of the Ukraine war is how much the CIA doesn't know. The Agency is as uncertain about Volodymyr Zelensky's thinking and intentions as it is about Vladimir Putin's. And as the Russian leader faces his biggest challenge in the aftermath of a failed mutiny, the Agency is straining to understand what the two sides will do—because President Joe Biden has determined that the United States (and Kyiv) will not undertake any actions that might threaten Russia itself or the survival of the Russian state, lest Putin escalate the conflict and engulf all of Europe in a new World War. In exchange, it expects that the Kremlin won't escalate the war beyond Ukraine or resort to the use of nuclear weapons.

America's stance is under threat because the near-mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, raises the question as to whether Moscow has run out of options.

"Putin's back is really against the wall" a senior defense intelligence official tells Newsweek, warning that while the CIA fully grasps how much Russia is stuck in Ukraine, it is very much in the dark with regard to what Putin might do about it. With talk of Russian nuclear weapons possibly being deployed to Belarus, and in light of Prigozhin's public exposure of the terrible costs of fighting, something that Moscow has suppressed, the official says that it is a particularly delicate moment. "What is happening off the battlefield is now most important," says the official, who was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. "Both sides pledge to limit their actions, but it falls to the United States to enforce those pledges. This all hinges on the quality of our intelligence."

"There is a clandestine war, with clandestine rules, underlying all of what is going on in Ukraine," says a Biden administration senior intelligence official who also spoke with Newsweek. The official, who is directly involved in Ukraine policy planning, requested anonymity to discuss highly classified matters. The official (and numerous other national security officials who spoke to Newsweek) say that Washington and Moscow have decades of experience crafting these clandestine rules, necessitating that the CIA play an outsize role: as primary spy, as negotiator, as supplier of intelligence, as logistician, as wrangler of a network of sensitive NATO relations and perhaps most important of all, as the agency trying to ensure the war does not further spin out of control.

"Don't underestimate the Biden administration's priority to keep Americans out of harm's way and reassure Russia that it doesn't need to escalate," the senior intelligence officer says. "Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?" he asks rhetorically. "Yes, but it's also not nefarious."

Newsweek has examined in depth the scale and scope of the CIA's activities in Ukraine, especially in light of growing Congressional questions about the extent of U.S. aid and whether President Biden is keeping his pledge not to have "boots on the ground." Neither the CIA nor the White House would give specific responses for confirmation, but they asked that Newsweek not reveal the specific locations of CIA operations inside Ukraine or Poland, that it not name other countries involved in the clandestine CIA efforts and that it not name the air service that is supporting the clandestine U.S. logistics effort. After repeated requests for an on-the-record comment, the CIA declined. Neither the Ukrainian nor Russian governments responded to requests for comment.

Over the course of its three-month investigation, Newsweek spoke to over a dozen intelligence experts and officials. Newsweek also sought out contrary views. All of the credible experts and officials Newsweek spoke to agreed that the CIA has been successful in discreetly playing its part in dealing with Kyiv and Moscow, in moving mountains of information and materiel and in dealing with a diverse set of other countries, some of whom are quietly helping while also trying to stay out of Russia's crosshairs. And they didn't dispute that on the CIA's main task—knowing what's going on in the minds of the leaders of Russia and Ukraine—the Agency has had to struggle.

Intelligence experts say this war is unique in that the United States is aligned with Ukraine, yet the two countries are not allies. And though the United States is helping Ukraine against Russia, it is not formally at war with that country. Thus, much of what Washington does to aid Ukraine is kept secret–and much of what is normally in the realm of the U.S. military is being carried out by the Agency. Everything that is done, including work inside Ukraine itself, must comply with limits established by Biden.

"It's a tricky balancing act—the CIA being very active in the war while not contradicting the Biden administration's central pledge, which is that there are no American boots on the ground," says a second senior intelligence official who was granted anonymity to speak with Newsweek.

For the CIA, its major role in the war in Ukraine has provided a boost in morale after the sour relationship between former President Donald Trump and his spy chiefs.

hat is partly why the CIA is also keen to distance itself from anything that suggests a direct attack on Russia and any role in actual combat—something Kyiv has repeatedly done, from the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline and the Kerch Strait bridge to drone and special operations attacks across the border. These attacks seem contrary to pledges by Zelensky that Ukraine would not take actions that might expand the scope of the war.

"The view advanced by many that the CIA is central to the fighting—say, for instance, in killing Russian generals on the battlefield or in important strikes outside Ukraine, such as the sinking of the Moskva flagship–doesn't play well in Kyiv," says one retired senior military intelligence official granted anonymity to speak with Newsweek. "If we want Kyiv to listen to us, we need to remind ourselves that the Ukrainians are winning the war, not us."

Washington has quietly expressed its displeasure to the Zelensky government with regard to the Nord Stream attack last September, but that act of sabotage was followed by other strikes, including the recent drone attack on the Kremlin itself. Those have raised questions over one of the CIA's main intelligence responsibilities—knowing enough of what the Ukrainians are planning to both influence them and to adhere to their secret agreement with Moscow.

Trouble Shooting
The CIA was central to the war even before it started. At the beginning of his administration, Biden tapped director William Burns as his global trouble shooter—a clandestine operator able to communicate with foreign leaders outside normal channels, someone who could occupy important geopolitical space between overt and covert, and an official who could organize work in the arena that exists between what is strictly military and what is strictly civilian.

As former Ambassador to Russia, Burns has been particularly influential with regard to Ukraine. The CIA had been monitoring Russia's buildup and in November 2021, three months before the invasion, Biden dispatched Burns to Moscow to warn the Kremlin of the consequences of any attack. Though the Russian president snubbed Biden's emissary by staying at his retreat in Sochi on the Black Sea, 800 miles away, he did agree to speak with Burns via a Kremlin secure phone.

"In some ironic ways though, the meeting was highly successful," says the second senior intelligence official, who was briefed on it. Even though Russia invaded, the two countries were able to accept tried and true rules of the road. The United States would not fight directly nor seek regime change, the Biden administration pledged. Russia would limit its assault to Ukraine and act in accordance with unstated but well-understood guidelines for secret operations.

This includes staying within day-to-day boundaries of spying, not crossing certain borders and not attacking each other's leadership or diplomats. "Generally the Russians have respected these global red lines, even if those lines are invisible," the official says.

Once Russian forces poured into Ukraine, the United States had to quickly shift gears. The CIA, like the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, had misread Russia's military capacity and Ukraine's resilience as Russia failed to take Kyiv and withdrew from the north.

By last July, both sides settled in for a long war. As the war shifted, Washington's focus changed from very public and symbolic troop deployments to Europe to "deter" further Russian moves, to providing weapons to sustain Ukraine's ability to fight. In the face of Zelensky's masterful public lobbying, the United States slowly and reluctantly agreed to supply better and longer-range weapons, weapons that in theory could threaten Russian territory and thus flirt with the feared escalation.

"Zelensky has certainly outdone everyone else in getting what he wants, but Kyiv has had to agree to obey certain invisible lines as well," says the senior defense intelligence official.

Behind the scenes, dozens of countries also had to be persuaded to accept the Biden administration's limits. Some of these countries, including Britain and Poland, are willing to take more risk than the White House is comfortable with. Others—including some of Ukraine's neighbors—do not entirely share American and Ukrainian zeal for the conflict, do not enjoy unanimous public support in their anti-Russian efforts and do not want to antagonize Putin.

It fell to the CIA to manage this underworld, working through its foreign intelligence counterparts and secret police rather than public politicians and diplomats. The Agency established its own operating bases and staging areas. The CIA sought help from Ukraine's neighbors in better understanding Putin as well as Zelensky and his administration. Agency personnel went into and out of Ukraine on secret missions, to assist with the operations of new weapons and systems, some of which were not publicly divulged. But the CIA operations were always conducted with an eye to avoid direct confrontation with Russian troops.

Simply, CIA personnel can routinely go—and can do—what U.S. military personnel can't. That includes inside Ukraine. The military, on the other hand, is restricted from entering Ukraine, except under strict guidelines that have to be approved by the White House. This limits the Pentagon to a small number of Embassy personnel in Kyiv. Newsweek was unable to establish the exact number of CIA personnel in Ukraine, but sources suggest it is less than 100 at any one time.

Now, more than a year after the invasion, the United States sustains two massive networks, one public and the other clandestine. Ships deliver goods to ports in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, and those supplies are moved by truck, train and air to Ukraine. Clandestinely though, a fleet of commercial aircraft (the "grey fleet") crisscrosses Central and Eastern Europe, moving arms and supporting CIA operations. The CIA asked Newsweek not to identify specific bases where this network is operating, nor to name the contractor operating the planes. The senior administration official said much of the network had been successfully kept under wraps, and that it was wrong to assume that Russian intelligence knows the details of the CIA's efforts. Washington believes that If the supply route were known, Russia would attack the hubs and routes, the official said.

None of this can be sustained without a major counter-intelligence effort to thwart Russia's own spying, the bread-and-butter work of the Agency. Russian intelligence is very active in Ukraine, intelligence experts say, and almost anything the U.S. shares with Ukraine is assumed to also make it to Russian intelligence. Other Eastern European countries are equally riddled with Russian spies and sympathizers, particularly the frontline countries.

"A good part of our time is taken up hunting down Russian penetrations of foreign governments and intelligence services," says a military counterintelligence official working on the Ukraine war. "We have been successful in identifying Russian spies inside the Ukrainian government and military, and at various other points in the supply chain. But Russian penetration of Eastern European countries, even those who are members of NATO, is deep, and Russian influence operations are of direct concern."

As billions of dollars worth of arms started flowing through Eastern Europe, another issue that the CIA is working on is the task of fighting corruption, which turned out to be a major problem.

The Poland Connection
Since the end of the Cold War, Poland and the United States, through the CIA, have established particularly warm relations. Poland hosted a CIA torture "black site" in the village of Stare Kiejkuty during 2002-2003. And after the initial Russian invasion of Donbas and Crimea in 2014, CIA activity expanded to make Poland its third-largest station in Europe.
Poland officially became the center of NATO's response, first in handling hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the battle, and then as the logistical hub for arms flowing back into Ukraine. The country also became the center of the overt military response. A forward headquarters for the Army V Corps (5th Corps) has been established in Poland. Additional supplies and ammunition for U.S. use are stored in Poland. A permanent Army garrison has been activated, the first ever to be located on NATO's eastern flank, and today there are now about 10,000 American troops in Poland.

But Poland's real value is its role in the CIA's secret war. From Poland, CIA case officers are able to connect with their many agents, including Ukrainian and Russian spies. CIA ground branch personnel of the Special Activities Center handle security and interact with their Ukrainian partners and the special operations forces of 20 nations, almost all of whom also operate from Polish bases. CIA cyber operators work closely with their Polish partners.

The closeness of U.S.-Polish relations particularly paid off over 24 hours last November. Burns was at Turkish intelligence headquarters in Ankara meeting with Sergei Naryshkin, his Russian counterpart.

While he was in transit, a missile landed in the Polish town of Przewodow, less than 20 miles from the Ukraine border, setting off a diplomatic and press frenzy. A Russian attack on a NATO country would trigger Article 5 of the NATO charter, the principle that an attack on one was an attack on all. But U.S. intelligence, through monitoring thermal signatures that track every missile launch, immediately knew the missile originated from inside Ukraine and not from Russia. (It turned out to be a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile that had gone awry.) Burns got the intelligence from Washington and immediately transmitted it to Polish president Andrzej Duda.

One crisis was averted. But a new one was brewing. Strikes inside Russia were continuing and even increasing, contrary to the fundamental U.S. condition for supporting Ukraine. There was a mysterious spate of assassinations and acts of sabotage inside Russia, some occurring in and around Moscow. Some of the attacks, the CIA concluded, were domestic in origin, undertaken by a nascent Russian opposition. But others were the work of Ukraine—even if analysts were unsure of the extent of Zelensky's direction or involvement.

'Karma Is a Cruel Thing'
Early in the war, Kyiv made its own "non-agreement" with Washington to accept the Biden administration's limitations on attacking Russia, even though that put it at a military disadvantage as Russian forces launched air and missile attacks from their own territory. In exchange, the U.S. promised arms and intelligence that came in ever greater quantities and firepower as Zelensky pushed harder.

The "non-agreement held up for quite some time. There were occasional cross-border artillery attacks and some errant weapons that landed in Russia; in each case Ukraine denied any involvement.

Then came the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines on September 26. Although not in Russia, they were majority-owned by Russian state gas firm Gazprom. Again, Ukraine denied involvement despite the suspicions of the CIA. We have "nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and have no information about...sabotage groups," Zelensky's top aide said, calling any speculation to the contrary "amusing conspiracy theories."

Next came the truck bomb attack on the Kerch Strait bridge on October 8. Ukraine had threatened to attack the 12-mile bridge that links Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow had annexed in 2014 in a move condemned as illegal by much of the world. Though it wasn't clear who carried out the attack, Putin blamed Ukrainian "special services." Meeting with his Security Council, Putin said, "If attempts continue to carry out terrorist acts on our territory, Russia's responses will be harsh and in their scale will correspond to the level of threats created for the Russian Federation." And indeed Russia did respond with multiple attacks on targets in Ukrainian cities.

Behind the scenes, though, the CIA was scrambling to determine the origins.

"The CIA learned with the attack on the Crimea bridge that Zelensky either didn't have complete control over his own military or didn't want to know of certain actions," says the military intelligence official.

The Kerch bridge attack was followed by an even longer-range strike on the Engels Russian bomber base, almost 700 miles from Kyiv. The CIA did not know about any of these attacks beforehand, according to a senior U.S. official, but rumors started to circulate that the Agency was, through some mysterious third party, directing others to strike Russia. The Agency delivered a strong and unusual on-the-record denial.

In January this year, Burns was back in Kyiv to meet with Zelensky and his Ukrainian counterparts, discussing the clandestine war and the need to preserve strategic stability. "Kyiv was beginning to taste a potential victory and was therefore more willing to take risks," says the second senior intelligence official. "But Russian sabotage groups also had emerged by the end of the year." The January talks had little impact. As for the sabotage strikes themselves, the senior U.S. government official tells Newsweek that the CIA has had no prior knowledge of any Ukrainian operations.

All of this culminated in the May 3 drone attack inside the Kremlin walls in Moscow. Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev blamed the United States and Britain, saying that "the terrorist attacks committed in Russia are...designed to destabilize the socio-political situation, and to undermine the constitutional foundations and sovereignty of Russia." Ukrainian officials implicitly admitted culpability. "Karma is a cruel thing," Zelensky advisor Mykhailo Podolyak responded, adding fuel to the fire.

A senior Polish government official told Newsweek that it might be impossible to convince Kyiv to abide by the non-agreement it made to keep the war limited. "In my humble opinion, the CIA fails to understand the nature of the Ukrainian state and the reckless factions that exist there," says the Polish official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.

In response, the senior U.S. defense intelligence official stressed the delicate balance the Agency must maintain in its many roles, saying: "I hesitate to say that the CIA has failed." But the official said sabotage attacks and cross border fighting created a whole new complication and continuing Ukrainian sabotage "could have disastrous consequences."

President Joe Biden defended what he called his "very difficult decision" to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine in an interview that aired Sunday, saying the war-torn country "needed" the controversial weapons to fight off invading Russian troops.

"It took me a while to be convinced to do it. But the main thing is, they either have the weapons to stop the Russians now from their — keep them from stopping the Ukrainian offensive through these areas — or they don’t. And I think they needed them," Biden said in an interview on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."

The administration's announcement Friday that it would be sending cluster munitions to Ukraine in a U.S. military aid package was met with pushback from some of Biden's fellow Democrats, who noted the surface-to-surface warheads, which disperse small munitions or bombs over wide 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 the weapons in Ukraine was a potential war crime.

Biden said the move was necessary now because the Ukrainian military is low on ammunition, emphasizing that it's a temporary measure.

"The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition, the ammunition that they used to call them 155-millimeter weapons. This is a— this is a war relating to munitions, and they’re running out of those— that ammunition, and we’re low on it. And so what I finally did, took the recommendation of the Defense Department, to not permanently, but to allow for [their use] in this transition period," he said in the interview, conducted 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 the weapons were crucial to his country's defense. "We need it to win this war," Yermak said.

While some Republicans have criticized Biden for sending the weapons, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said it was the right thing to do.

"Russia is dropping with impunity cluster bombs in Ukraine, the country of Ukraine, right now," McCaul said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., however, told CNN that "cluster bombs should never be used. That's crossing a line."

Lee urged Biden to reconsider his decision "because they are very dangerous bombs." Asked if she thought it could be a war crime if the administration did not change its position, Lee said, "What I think is we would risk losing our moral leadership."

The world has caught a glimpse of the inner workings of Ukraine’s dealings with its Western backers, and like many a marriage, it’s complicated.

During a high-profile, two-day NATO summit in Lithuania, intense wrangling that diplomats generally prefer to keep behind closed doors instead spilled into public view, revealing a relationship between Kyiv and Western capitals that can be high-strung, emotionally fraught and occasionally messy.

Heading into the summit’s final day, the United States and its allies were mired in disagreement that highlighted fundamental divisions between the war-torn country and its Western partners. Russia, meanwhile, gloated from the sidelines.

By the end of the summit, Ukraine and its backers had done their best to paper over any discord, with President Joe Biden praising Ukraine’s “astounding” courage and Ukraine’s leader effusively thanking the U.S. for its support. Ukraine walked away from the summit with tangible wins in hand, including unprecedented long-term security commitments from the world’s leading democracies and a simplified path to future NATO admission.

Still, the brief eruption of frustration among allies that have sought to publicly portray themselves in lockstep was a window into the difficult task of holding the alliance together as the war in Ukraine surpasses the 500-day mark.

To hear NATO’s version of events, the summit in Lithuania displayed the alliance’s “unwavering solidarity” with Ukraine “in the heroic defence” of its people and Western values, according to its communique published Tuesday. It said NATO would extend an invite for Ukraine to join the 31-member defense organization, but only when all allies agreed and certain conditions were met.

Ukraine has shown a more pessimistic take on what has gone down — initially at least. It believes that by holding Europe’s eastern flank against Russia it has already done more than enough to be offered a concrete entry plan.

“When will the conditions be met? What are those conditions? Who has to formulate them?” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview with Radio Free Europe on Wednesday. He was echoing his president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who arrived in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on Tuesday while fuming about NATO’s “strange wording about ‘conditions.’”

Zelenskyy went on to deliver a barnstorming speech in downtown Vilnius on Tuesday, giving a clear warning that he wanted to see “a NATO that does not hesitate, that does not waste time and does not look over their backs at any aggressor” — referring to Western fears about escalating a war with nuclear-armed Russia.

Zelenskyy’s tone had changed Wednesday afternoon when he thanked Biden, saying that “you spend this money for our lives.” He also praised the U.S. for sending shipments of controversial cluster munitions.

During a warm public meeting with Zelenskyy, Biden acknowledged “frustration I can only imagine,” more than 15 years after NATO promised Kyiv a path to future membership.

But feelings ran deep among Ukrainians. Daria Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv-based nongovernmental organization that monitors graft in Ukraine, said the president’s strident tone merely reflected opinion back home. “Our allies should not be frustrated with his words because this is what Ukrainians on the ground feel,” Kaleniuk told NBC News.

There was more promising news for Ukraine as the G7, an informal group of rich democracies, said as part of the summit Wednesday it would shore up and solidify its previously ad hoc military support for Kyiv into bilateral long-term security commitments. Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, called this agreement an “important victory for Ukraine on the way to NATO.”

But membership of the alliance is the ultimate prize. And Zelenskyy knows Ukrainians are expecting him to return from Vilnius with something solid. Nearly 90% want to see their country join NATO, according to a recent poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The president’s popularity has skyrocketed partly because of his image as someone who gets things done.

Taras Tarasiuk, a security analyst in Kyiv, told NBC News that he had “high expectations” of the summit but that in the end it gave Ukrainians “the feeling that we are alone, that we have to fight by ourselves.”

These tensions boiled over after Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, got into a heated exchange with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan during a discussion at the Vilnius summit. “What should I tell my son? That President Biden and NATO didn’t invite Ukraine to NATO because he’s afraid of Russia?” she asked Sullivan on Wednesday.

He replied by praising her work but also saying that the American people “deserve a degree of gratitude” for supporting Ukraine.

Kaleniuk expressed this frustration in an interview with NBC News just hours earlier.

“It’s an insufficient and disappointing communique, which presents NATO’s weakness, not NATO’s strength,” she said about Tuesday's statement, describing it as “a green light for the Kremlin to keep nuclear blackmail going,” in reference to Putin’s threats against the West.

Russia, meanwhile, gloated from the sidelines.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev mocked NATO’s lack of clarity on when Ukraine might join. “Most likely — it will never happen,” Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on the messaging app Telegram. “That’s what realists in the alliance are afraid to say out loud.”

Using the taunting style typical of many Russian politicians and propagandists, Medvedev wrote that the communique was so vague because “the completely crazy West could not come up with anything else.”

The summit was “predictability of the highest level, to the point of idiocy,” he adde