Ukraine’s government asked its Western partners to supply it with cluster munitions last year, sources close to NATO member countries confirmed to the German Agency on Monday.

The US government has discussed with its allies the request to send the highly controversial munitions, according to the same sources, but so far no decision has apparently been made.

Some 24 hours earlier Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, asked Western leaders for cluster munitions and phosphorus incendiary munitions for his country’s armed forces at the Munich Security Conference.

However, there are reservations about this in countries such as Germany, which have signed the international convention on the prohibition of cluster munitions.

Which means that Berlin has no intention of allowing Estonia to supply the Ukrainian army with German-made cluster munitions.

Estonian media reported that Tallinn is weighing whether to deliver cluster munitions to the Ukrainian military. “Estonian warehouses contain thousands of such munitions and the Ukrainians are asking for them from Estonia,” according to the publication.

“Any re-export requests should be contrasted with (Germany’s) obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions and Article 18a of the Arms Control Act”, however, a representative of Germany’s economy ministry told the German Agency. These two texts entail a “prohibition of the use, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and transfer of cluster munitions”.

Cluster munitions consist of the carrier (bomb, shell) and so-called “sub-munitions”, which are dispersed over a large area. By their nature, anything but precision weapons are responsible for countless civilian deaths.

The use of ammunition of these two types is controversial to say the least. Cluster munitions are theoretically banned under the Oslo Convention (2008), which neither Ukraine nor Russia have signed. Phosphorus munitions cause horrific burns to the people they hit.