US to Send Banned Munitions to Ukraine
The New York Times broke the story yesterday. Ukrainian President Zelensky requested cluster bombs. Therefore, the Biden administration will send them.
They are internationally banned.
How does incrementally approving every single weapon system proposal on an increasingly escalatory schedule, no matter how ill-advised, support the idea that Biden has been measured and restrained in handling the war as per his PR?
They are banned because, for years to come, they’ll be finding these cluster bombs. The bombs have mostly killed children who come across them while playing. Many don’t explode on impact.
The Story
The Biden administration will send Internationally banned cluster bombs to Ukraine, the U.S. officials said on Thursday. Human rights organizations oppose this move.
According to Reuters, the arms assistance package, which includes cluster munitions fired by a 155-millimeter Howitzer cannon, is expected to be officially announced on Friday. It is part of a new munitions package.
Biden’s decision is controversial because 120 countries — including France, Germany, the UK, and many other NATO allies — are parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. This 2010 agreement bans the use and transfer of such weapons. The US, Russia, and Ukraine didn’t sign the deal, although the US has in the past condemned other countries, including Russia, for using them, Bloomberg reports.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch urged Russia and Ukraine to cease using cluster munitions and called on the United States to refrain from supplying them. The organization’s report highlighted that Russian and Ukrainian forces had utilized these weapons, losing Ukrainian civilian lives.
So has Ukraine.
Reuters:
Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions that have killed Ukrainian civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Thursday as the U.S. weighs whether to answer the Ukraine government’s call to supply it with the weapons.
Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group, called on Russia and Ukraine to stop using the weapons and urged the U.S. not to supply them.
More than 120 countries have signed on to an international treaty banning the weapons, which typically scatter many smaller so-called bomblets over a large area that can kill or maim unwary civilians months or years later.
[…]
Ukraine fired cluster munition rockets into Russian-controlled areas in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium last year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Human Rights Watch said, citing interviews with more than 100 residents, witnesses and local emergency personnel.
[…]
“Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years,” Mary Wareham, the group’s acting arms director, said in a statement. “Both sides should immediately stop using them and not try to get more of these indiscriminate weapons.”
Warning
In comments shared with Newsweek, Russia’s ambassador to the United States dismissed media reports suggesting that Moscow was planning a false-flag provocation at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, located in Ukraine, and alleged that Kyiv was using the narrative to draw NATO into a devastating conflict.
He called on Ukraine President Zelensky to refrain from escalating.
“We call on the curators of the Kiev regime to exercise responsibility and exert influence on their ‘wards’ in order to avoid a large-scale catastrophe,” Antonov told Newsweek. “Western ruling elites should understand that the failures on the battlefield make Kiev eager to create a pretext for the deployment of the NATO contingent to Ukraine, thereby to inflate a regional conflict into World War III.”
BREAKING: They just leaked a story to the @nytimes and President @JoeBiden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will be appearing @WhiteHouse briefing room tomorrow to defend it: NYT reporting that Biden is considering providing banned munitions to Ukraine. He will supply… pic.twitter.com/QeR0hBi7Ys
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) July 7, 2023
Moscow has warned that the supply of foreign arms to Kiev will only prolong the conflict while doing little to deter its military objectives. Responding to earlier calls for cluster munitions, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the move would mark a major escalation by Washington and only serve to undermine the security of the NATO bloc.
Our President
BREAKING NEWS: Joe Biden:
“#Putin is losing the war in Iraq.”
Are these words from a strong leader who won the 2020 election with 81,000,000 votes?
Diminished capacity is obvious.
As corrupt old Biden spends $100’s of billions, escalating a nuclear WWIII. pic.twitter.com/PDojNbi6UG
— Planet Ponzi (@PlanetPonzi) June 28, 2023
How Cluster Bombs Work
30th June 1982:
In a piece about that other war in 1982, that of Israel against the PLO and Syrian forces in Lebanon, the New York Times prints an infographic on “How a Cluster Bomb Works”.#F82 #FalklandsWar1982 pic.twitter.com/le9QeShbj2— GMan (Ґленн) ☘️🇬🇧🇺🇦🇺🇸🇵🇱🇮🇱🍊🌻 (@FAB87F) June 30, 2023
Dangerous Thinking
Russian Academic Sergey Karaganov: Using Tactical Nuclear Weapons against European Countries Will Prevent WWIII; If I Were in Putin’s Shoes, I Would Do It; the U.S. Will Not Come to Europe’s Rescue #Russia #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/XJIpDO4Tqt
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) June 29, 2023
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