US-provisioned cluster munitions deployed in Ukraine - normalising brutality.

originally posted by: MykeNukem
a reply to: BalticB

Long term stability? You think we're helping to "stabilize" the region for the good of the people?

Like I said, clueless morons being fueled by hate and feelz that are spoon fed from BS MSM and government propaganda.

The West caused this #show in the first place.

But I didn't come to argue with headline worshippers. You do you...

what the hell...you are just hoping for Ukrainian capitulation. What do you think comes after that? Everybody lives in peace happily ever after? The world will know peace when the russkie army is wiped out. Seems like you also worship headlines, but the ones created by certain intelligence agencies in Moscow.

How would you like if your country was invaded and people abroad started making memes or criticizing you for defending your land? You would mad as hell and rightly so. Slava Ukraini. Death to russia.

a reply to: BalticB

"Death to Russia"

They got you right where they want you.

Carry on...

MykeNukem, This has been the sentiment in Lithuania for the past 600 years. You don't know what you're talking about.

a reply to: BalticB

So you admit you're biased with your country's traditional hate?

That's a start at least.

Was wondering how many rounds of 155 mm shells will be involved in this transfer from the US to Ukraine, and found this article reporting that the US may have up to 3 million rounds of these shells, although some portion of them are for 105 mm howitzers. That's a lot in comparison to how much the US and other NATO countries have been supplying regular shells so far.

The US evidently is switching over to tungsten fragmentation shells, which each deliver 155,000 shrapnel pieces.

Also, although around 120-130 countries have banned cluster munitions, all the countries with significant land armies have not signed it, with the exception of Japan, which relies more on air and naval forces for its defense.

These last two facts are discussed in the below video, a primer on cluster munitions as well as artillery in general. This YT'er's other videos on the war and related defense issues are also worth watching if such matters interest you.

originally posted by: MykeNukem
a reply to: BalticB

So you admit you're biased with your country's traditional hate?

That's a start at least.

Ask anyone in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazachstan about Russia and you'll get a biased answer. The bias does not form out of thin air, you know. In this case it was formed by hundreds of years of russian imperialism and sheer brutality.

originally posted by: Pyle
a reply to: putnam6

It is one of the reason I have heard for this action. "Old NATO stockpiles have started to get low on standard munitions and this was a stopgap action until manufacturing catches up."

But personally I am not sure that is 100% true as the cluster munitions are great at hitting large areas of soft targets, such as we are seeing in the Russian defensive lines in occupied Ukraine slowing down the UAF pushes.

That's what I'm thinking it's nothing but a stop-gap, but you can't run an effective counter-offensive against anybody using stop-gap measures. It will be highly unlikely there will be a breakthrough this year, they got 3-4 months this year at most.

By then the Russians will replenish their troops and refortify their positions, and we will be back to where we started for this years counteroffensive.

originally posted by: BalticB

originally posted by: MykeNukem

How can anyone take this seriously?

Clueless morons, fueled by hate, not logic IMO.

Let's just step it up and unleash the chemical weapons now, right?

Then we can finish it off with a little bitty nuclear war....good times...

Supporting the Ukrainian self-defense has NOTHING to do with all that woke crap. You're just demonstrating the usual American/Western ignorance. This is a question of the survival of one of the largest countries and nations in Europe, as well as the long-term stability in the region. I thank god every day that you ignorant clowns are not the ones making political decisions.

Respectfully if the ignorant Americans pull the plug on aid, Ukraine will lose the sliver of land in the east. Obviously not ideal, but Ukraine survives.

Russia couldn't occupy and hold the rest of Ukraine if it wanted to.

a reply to: MykeNukem

Just because you want Russia to be destroyed doesn't mean you hate Russians. Some of them are good people.

Respectfully if the ignorant Americans pull the plug on aid, Ukraine will lose the sliver of land in the east. Obviously not ideal, but Ukraine survives.

Russia couldn't occupy and hold the rest of Ukraine if it wanted to.

You are correct. Although I was talking about the US society as a whole, not the political power centers. Thankfully there is still some understanding about the complexities of European issues. (I don't have a lot of hope in sleepy Joe though haha, good thing the there are more people involved in the decision making processes).

Edit: sorry, made a meal out of that quote

a reply to: MisguidedAngel

Ukraine had stockpiles of cluster bombs and decided to use a bunch of them on their own people in the Donbass just because they had some ethnic Russian DNA IN THEIR bodies

I think you'll find the people Ukraine were fighting in Eastern Ukraine were ethnic Russians commanded by Igor Girkin along with Wagner forces led by the well known Nazi and Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin.


You are free to peddle the Russian narrative of Ukraine attacking their own citizens as fact if you choose but it isn't correct , armed insurgencies are tackled the same way by any country that has them , Russia still has Wagner forces in Africa fighting against insurgencies in countries there.

originally posted by: MisguidedAngel
Absolutely disgusting by Joe Biden to deploy these cluster bombs on top of the Russians. This just proves more so that it was time for Russia to strike and get this pro American leadership out of Ukraine once and for all.

As has been pointed out to you, Russia has been using cluster munitions on civilians.

Where is your outrage about that?

You have previously expressed your outrage at the Kerch bridge attack, condemning attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Russia, night after night has been attacking port storage infrastructure and has destroyed thousands of tons of grain.

Where is your outrage about that?

Bit of a pattern emerging?

a reply to: putnam6

The US is required to keep a minimum stockpile of weapons for our use. I believe at one point it was enough for ninety days continuous combat. Anything over that is surplus. So we’ve been sending older weapons that are close to having to be destroyed, and replacing our stockpile.

One of the reasons they’re sending cluster munitions is that we’re seeing effectively WWI trench warfare. A JDAM works in this situation, but a cluster munition will hit harder and break morale. The other is to give manufacturing time to ramp up, so we don’t have to dip into our stockpile.

a reply to: MrInquisitive

I don't think that the use of these weapons is justified just because the other side has used them first. We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard, is my point. And no, not a Kremlin mouthpiece, that's just a silly ad hominem.

originally posted by: FlyInTheOintment
a reply to: MrInquisitive

I don't think that the use of these weapons is justified just because the other side has used them first. We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard, is my point. And no, not a Kremlin mouthpiece, that's just a silly ad hominem.

My point has been that the people complaining about the US supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions seem to have no problem with Russia using them as well, and Russian ones having a higher dud rate, i.e. are more dangerous to civilians because the duds lie around and can explode. Also there is no complaint about all the deployment of mines by Russia, and the dam collapse, which spread mines all over the place.

It seems disingenuous to complain about a country defending itself with less than ideal weapons when the invading army uses such weaponry and commits many atrocities and war crimes. Yes, it would be nice if the Ukrainians didn't have to resort to such weaponry, but it isn't practical or possible.

I understand what you're saying, but asking a country to sit on its hands or to less effectively fight a defensive and existential war simply is not a reasonable point of view. Also we're talking about the deployment of these cluster munitions along the front lines in Ukrainian territory. If the Ukrainian government considers the advantages to using these munitions outweighs the risks, that is their decision. The US has only used cluster munitions in other countries, so it is not like the US has the moral high ground on the matter. And if your country and countrymen were being killed everyday by an invading neighboring country, you might have a different opinion on the use of less savory weapons.

a reply to: MrInquisitive

Perun is one of the few people doing commentary on this war that is worth watching weekly. He drops a video every Sunday. I've been watching him since his "All Bling, No Basics" video near the start of the war. His high level observations are worth the hour or so his videos run. Most won't watch them, they're too long for modern attention spans and all though rather simplified in many ways, it's still takes an understanding of defense economics and logistics to take in his videos in a meaningful way.

In fact, his latest video just got uploaded so thats how I'll spend my Sunday morning, listening to Perun with the F1 race pre show on the other monitor.

a reply to: putnam6

Just my humble opinion putnam but if the US stopped aide today, Poland would be in Ukraine by the end of summer, maybe the end of the year at the latest. How would that change the dynamics of this conflict, I don't know but I am pretty confident in saying the Poles would enter the conflict in full force. They didn't make all those shiny new purchases to sit on their hands. They know that if Ukraine falls, that puts the Russia on their border moreso than the sliver that is Kaliningrad. And the Poles don't want that, they know what that inevitably leads to.

a reply to: MykeNukem

I'm disappointed someone leaked my profile pik from Tinder.

originally posted by: FlyInTheOintment
a reply to: MrInquisitive

I don't think that the use of these weapons is justified just because the other side has used them first. We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard, is my point. And no, not a Kremlin mouthpiece, that's just a silly ad hominem.

GEneva conventions allow use of forbidden weapons if the enemy uses them first.

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

It's a temporary measure due to the Ukrainian army running out of munitions. They were between a rock and a hard place, IMO.

The same can be said for Russian bombing of civilians at the onset of this invasion, 'no regard for the sanctity of life'.

It's war and war is hell.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters at the White House: “We recognise that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance.

“This is why we deferred the decision for as long as we could. But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery.

“That is intolerable to us. Ukraine would not be using these munitions in some foreign land. This is their country they’re defending. These are their citizens they’re protecting and they are motivated to use any weapon system they have in a way that minimises risks to those citizens.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, described the aid package as “timely, broad and much-needed defense”, in a tweet thanking Biden for “decisive steps that bring Ukraine closer to victory over the enemy”.

“The expansion of Ukraine’s defense capabilities will provide new tools for the de-occupation of our land and bringing peace closer,” he wrote.

www.theguardian.com...