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The move comes ahead of a key NATO summit in Lithuania, where Biden is likely to face further questions from allies.
Russia, Ukraine, and the US have not signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the production, stockpiling, use, and transfer of these weapons.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked the US for the military aid. On Saturday, the Ukrainian leader marked the 500th day of the invasion by bringing home from Turkey five former commanders of Mariupol – a highly symbolic move that Russia says violates a prisoner exchange deal engineered last year.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Turkey had promised under the exchange agreement to keep the men in Turkey and complained Moscow had not been informed.
The five commanders have been lionised in Ukraine after leading a fierce three-month defence of Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant last year, the biggest city Russia had captured.
“We are returning home from Turkey and bringing our heroes home,” said Zelenskiy, who met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Istanbul on Friday.
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Thousands of civilians were killed in Mariupol when Russian forces laid the city to waste in the first months of the war. The Ukrainian defenders held out in tunnels and bunkers under the Azovstal plant, until finally ordered by Kyiv to surrender in May last year.
Moscow freed some of them in September in a prisoner swap brokered by Turkey, under terms that required the commanders to remain in Turkey until the end of the war.
In a video published Saturday, Zelensky also hailed Ukraine’s soldiers from Snake Island in the Black Sea, where soldiers led some of the earliest resistance to Russia’s invasion.
Speaking from the island, Zelensky honoured the Ukrainian soldiers who fought for it and all other defenders of the country, saying that reclaiming control of the island “is a great proof that Ukraine will regain every bit of its territory.”
Reuters, AP
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