MOSCOW (Realist English). The Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Tatiana Moskalkova, appealed to the chairman of the Turkish Parliament, Mustafa Şentop, with a request to stop the supply of weapons to the Ukraine in order to avoid further escalation.
“I appealed to Mr. Şentop with a request to stop the supply of weapons to the Ukraine in order to avoid further escalation of this situation,” Moskalkova wrote in her telegram channel.
According to her, she voiced the request during the meeting with the Chairman of the Turkish Parliament Şentop, which was also attended by the Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmitry Lubinets and the Turkish Ombudsman Sheref Malkoch.
Earlier, the Foreign Policy magazine reported that Turkey had begun sending American-made cluster munitions developed during the Cold War to the Ukraine. These are advanced conventional dual-purpose ammunition (dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, DPICM), which are designed to defeat armored vehicles. Each shell scatters 88 charges.
Neither the Turkish Embassy in Washington nor the Ministry of Defense of the Ukraine responded to Foreign Policy’s request for comment.
“After the United States denied (the Ukraine) access to cluster munitions, Turkey became the only place where they could get them. It just shows that despite the fact that Turkey is getting closer to Russia in some respects, it is becoming a really important supporter of the Ukraine militarily,” a source told the Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity.
The United States itself has banned the export of such cluster munitions due to the high level of defects: about a quarter of these elements do not explode.
The Turks sent the first batch of the ammunition (DPICM) in November 2022, a few months after Kiev unsuccessfully asked the Joseph Biden Administration to provide them, the Foreign Policy clarifies, citing informed sources in the United States and Europe.
