NEW YORK, September 21. /TASS/. The West supplying weapons to authorities in Kiev prolongs the conflict in Ukraine, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said at a news conference in New York.

"NATO countries are supplying weapons to Ukraine. Those who benefit from the conflict do not want an end to it," he said.

Addressing the Eastern Economic Forum in Russia’s Far East earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that additional supplies of weapons, including cluster munitions or rounds with depleted uranium, would only prolong the conflict rather than change the situation at the front. According to Putin, "the US administration quite recently viewed the use of cluster munitions as a war crime, as they said that publicly." And now the United States itself is sending cluster munitions to the combat zone in Ukraine, the Russian leader lamented.