rights groups warn they are lethal to civilians, who may come across so-called duds, bomblets that fail to explode on initial impact, and russia is said to have already used them across ukraine. asked why now for ukraine, president biden saying, they re running out of ammunition. ukraine s president zelenskyy thanking the u.s. and calling the latest batch of weapons a timely, broad, and much-needed defense aid package. courtney kube has more from the pentagon. reporter: today the biden administration announcing it will provide a controversial new weapon to ukraine, cluster munitions. ukraine has been asking the u.s. for the cluster bombs since last year. president biden today explaining why now. the ukrainians are running out of ammunition. reporter: specifically artillery rounds, allies struggling to keep them supplied as they
trying to shore up more assistance from the united states as his country enters the cold winter months with a battered energy system. in a telephone call sunday volodymyr zelenskyy told u.s. president joe biden was strikes had destroyed about half of ukraine s energy system. he thanked mr. biden for allocating aid to help rebuild the energy grid and for another defense aid package. right now ukrainians in several regions are struggling in the dark amid massive power shutdowns. mr. zelenskyy says odesa has been impacted the most after russia s latest attacks on the energy infrastructure. cnn s will rippley is in odesa and takes a look at the challenging situation in the port city. reporter: a race to restore electricity to parts of southern ukraine this weekend. more than 1.5 million people in the odesa region alone plunged into darkness at the peak of the
to shore up more assistance from the united states as his country enters the cold winter months with a battered energy system. in a telephone call sunday, volodymyr zelenskyy told u.s. president joe biden the russian strikes had destroyed about half of ukraine s energy system. he thanked mr. biden for allocating aid to help rebuild the energy grid and for another defense aid package. right now ukrainians and several regions are struggling in the dark amid powered shutdowns. mr. zelenskyy says that odessa has been impacted the most after russia s latest attacks on the energy infrastructure. restoration works continue in the south of our country, we re doing everything to return lies to odessa. at this point it s become impossible to partially restore lights in the district and
million ukrainians just in that region are now without electricity. this comes just one day after the united states announced a new aid package, a defense aid package for ukraine worth $275 million and a big part of that is air defense, specifically against drones and more specifically against iranian-made drones. more on that the in a second. first, take a look at this video. as you have seen from the donbas region, intense fighting there there, and president zelenskyy says one town is destroyed because of that fighting. so russia continues pushing for full control of the donbas region. putin has stated this as as goal of his, and russia is expending tremendous amounts of resources in trying to achieve that goal. so far they ve been unsuccessful. back to those iranian-made drones, eric, there was about a 3-week lull where we didn t see them. seeing more of hem this week, but the larger relationship between the russia and iran is
administration to do more to help ukraine. the president, who is meeting today with his national security team, authorized a $350 million defense aid package for ukraine late on friday. nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali joins me. we heard from the ukrainian ambassador to the u.s., talking about that military support and saying the country needs it faster. listen to what she said. thank you very much for all the support, and of course, we are working we are grateful for the support, and we are working very closely with all of them in order to receive more support, and we need all the support we can get from all of our friends and allies so we can sustain this defense action. reporter: and katy, as you said, the u.s. authorizing