By Eva Bartlett, August 1, 2023, RT.com

The recent US decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is immoral, unethical, and criminal. We’ve already seen the horrific results of the use of such weapons – civilians mutilated and murdered (often decades later) in Iraq and Southeast Asia, for example, and in Lebanon.

In addition to the ethical reasons not to send these weapons to Ukraine, there are pragmatic reasons why, from a military perspective. They are pointless for Ukraine, in spite of Western promises that they will “do more damage across a larger area than standard unitary artillery shells by releasing bomblets, or submunitions.”

In reality, while covering a wider area than a conventional high explosive munition, the cluster bomblets do not inflict more powerful damage, certainly not against Russian fortified positions. Their use is mainly for targeting troops in the open and lightly armoured vehicles. Not a game changer for Kiev.

According to former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter, “these are the worst weapon in the world for trench warfare. With trench warfare, you need a high explosive round that collapses bunkers, that collapses trenches.”

If the US knows that cluster munitions won’t change facts on the ground for Ukraine, why is it sending them? Because, as President Joe Biden himself has said, Ukraine is “running out of  ammunition and we’re low on it.” So, the US might as well offload its old stock of cluster munitions. They will not, as Biden claimed, “stop those tanks from rolling.” Nor will they – as the Biden administration claims – “save civilian lives.” They will almost certainly be used to kill, maim, and terrorize more Donbass civilians immediately and for years to come.

US Colonel Douglas Macgregor has emphasized that the cluster munitions have a high dud rate. According to Ritter, close to 40% of them fail to explode. Macgregor also highlighted how children are “attracted to these bright shiny objects that look like baseballs,” so insidious is their design.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan assures us that Kiev will not misuse the clusters. He claims that “Ukraine is committed to post-conflict de-mining efforts to mitigate any potential harm to civilians,” and that “Ukraine has provided written assurances that it is going to use these in a very careful way that is aimed at minimizing any risk to civilians.”

The US never signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions – which prohibits all use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions – but didn’t mind virtue signalling its abhorrence of them when it lobbed accusations against Russia (also not a signatory of the convention) on February 28, 2022, with Biden’s then press secretary, Jen Psaki, calling the use of cluster munitions a potential “war crime.”

As usual, it’s a heinous war crime when a US enemy supposedly does it, but not when an ally – or the US itself – actually does. As for Ukraine’s feeble promises to not use the cluster munitions against civilians, it has already been doing so since 2014.

Ukraine’s history of cluster-bombing civilians

By way of a personally witnessed example, in late March 2022, I visited the site of a Ukrainian missile attack that earlier that month had killed 22 civilians and injured 33 more. Because the Ukrainian-fired Tochka-U missile was intercepted, not all of its 50 cassettes of cluster munitions inside exploded in the city streets. Otherwise, the bloodbath would have been much worse. Then, in April 2022, Ukrainian forces targeted a railway station in Kramatorsk, likewise firing a Tochka-U with a cluster munition, killing a reported 50 people. Western media predictably accused Russia of the war crime, although investigations showed the missile emanated from Ukrainian-held territory to the southwest.

But like most of Kiev’s war crimes against Donbass civilians, its use of cluster munitions didn’t start in 2022. Back in 2014, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Ukrainian government forces’ use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city. An October 2 attack on the centre of Donetsk that included the use of cluster munition rockets killed an employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The New York Times likewise reported that on several occasions in October 2014, “the Ukrainian Army appears to have fired cluster munitions into the heart of Donetsk, unleashing a weapon banned in much of the world into a rebel-held city with a peacetime population of more than one million.” Citing physical evidence and interviews with witnesses and victims, the newspaper wrote there were “clear signs that cluster munitions had been fired from the direction of army-held territory.”

Ukrainian ‘petal mines’ continue to maim

But these aren’t the only clusters Ukraine has fired on Donbass civilians. In fact, over the course of last year, I documented the aftermath of Ukraine firing rockets containing cassettes of internationally-banned PFM-1 “petal” mines, over 300 of the mines per rocket.

Due to their design, they generally glide to the ground without exploding, until someone or something steps on or otherwise disturbs them.

According to authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Ukraine began firing these tiny, indiscriminate mines on March 6, 2022, during the battles for Mariupol, and then from May 18, 2022, into DPR and Kharkov Region settlements.

Since first documenting the aftermath of Ukraine’s use of the mines in central Donetsk in late July, 2022, I’ve interviewed victims, and reported on the painstaking work of Russian sappers to locate and destroy the mines. As of July 25 this year, 124 civilians have been injured by the mines, including ten children. Three civilians died as a result of their injuries.

Ukraine ratified the Ottawa Convention (the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention) on December 27, 2005, and it entered into force on June 1, 2006. Accordingly, Ukraine was obliged to never use anti-personnel mines, nor to stockpile or transfer them, and should have—but hasn’t—destroyed its stock. Of its 6 million stock of the PFM-1 mines, reportedly Ukraine still has over 3.3 million.

And while Human Rights Watch did finally address Ukraine’s use of the mines against civilians in one location – the city of Izium, north of Donetsk – the highly partial Western-funded NGO failed to investigate, much less highlight, Ukraine’s widespread use of the mines on Donbass civilian areas. HRW, as I wrote in March, then advised Ukraine to investigate itself for its use of the prohibited mines.

Western weapons used to kill Donbass civilians

It should be mentioned that over the course of its now nine-year war against Donbass, Ukraine has been using conventional NATO munitions to slaughter and maim civilians. The high explosive shells Ukraine fires throughout Donbass cities and towns, but also countless times in the very heart of Donetsk, tear people apart, leaving mangled bodies and remains on streets and sidewalks, and in marketplaces.

On July 22, Ukrainian forces allegedly shelled Russian journalists in Zaporozhye Region with cluster munitions, killing one and injuring three others.

These deliberate attacks on the media, on civilians’ homes, hospitals, infrastructure, and on civilians themselves should be condemned as loudly as Ukraine’s firing of petal mines and of cluster munitions in general. But the US announcement that it would send cluster munitions to Ukraine resulted in some mild tutting from other Western nations, but no seriously strong condemnation. Canada is one of the nations voicing at least some objection to sending cluster bombs, the leadership in Ottawa probably feeling it ought to mildly protest, given Canada’s convention.

The Canadian government recently stated that it is fully against the use of cluster munitions and is “committed to putting an end to the effects cluster munitions have on civilians – particularly children.” Yet aside from polite grumblings regarding the US clusters, I’ve seen no Canadian condemnation of Ukraine’s repeated use of cluster munitions on the civilians of Donbass.

But the real criminals here are the US government, which knows sending its cluster munitions won’t actually help Ukraine fight the Russian military in any tangible way, but that it is highly likely Ukraine will instead use them against Donbass civilians. Apparently, that’s just fine with the crocodile-tear-crying US hypocrites.

Update:

RT: “Cluster Munitions Hit Passenger Bus in Makeevka-Yasinovataya (Donetsk People’s Republic) – the vehicle came under fire from Kiev’s forces – local authorities”

Related Links:

–UN agency chief ‘deplores’ killing of Russian journalist

–They Saw and Heard the Truth — Then Lied About It: Media on Donbass Delegation Omitted Mention of Ukraine’s 8 Year War on the Autonomous Republics

–The West is silent as Ukraine targets civilians in Donetsk using banned ‘Petal’ mines

–In Just Under Three Weeks, Ukrainian-Fired Prohibited “Petal” Mines Maim At Least 44 Civilians, Kill 2, in Donetsk Region

–Here’s why Human Rights Watch deliberately only scratched the surface in exploring Ukraine’s use of banned ‘petal’ mines

–Western media continues to ignore how Ukraine is using NATO weapons to kill innocent civilians in the Donbass

By Prof. Alexander Hill, The Conversation, 7/20/23

Western news sources regularly report on civilian deaths on the Ukrainian side of the front lines of the war in Ukraine. But what about civilian deaths on the Russian side?

In May 2023, the United Nations reported 8,791 civilians have died and 14,815 have been injured in Ukraine since February 2022. Of those, 1,971 have been killed and 2,636 injured on territory occupied by the Russian Federation.

Western news outlets have tended to only provide details on a regular basis of those casualties suffered on the Ukrainian side of the front line. Exceptions to this — when the western media has widely reported on casualties behind Russian lines — have largely been when Russian forces have been accused of atrocities.

As Ukraine began an offensive against Russian forces in the fall of 2022, instances of civilian deaths resulting from Ukrainian missiles, rockets, drones, artillery and small arms fire on Russian-held territory inevitably increased.

Just as western news sources regularly report on deaths from missile, drone and artillery attacks on Ukrainian-held territory, Russian news outlets frequently report deaths and injuries on Russian-held territory.

A recent example is when the Russian news agency TASS and other Russian outlets reported one death and tens of injuries after Ukrainian forces shelled what Russians call Makeevka — Makiivka in Ukrainian — in the Donetsk region in July 2023. Some western news outlets didn’t report on the attack at all.

Civilian casualties prior to 2022

The war in Ukraine precedes February 2022, so statistics amassed since then aren’t telling the whole story of the conflict.

In the West, the war is largely perceived to have begun in February 2022 when Vladimir Putin’s government launched what it described as a “special military operation” and invaded Ukraine. But for all intents and purposes, the war has been going on since 2014.

Early that year, the pro-Russian democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a far from bloodless coup. That event has been described as a revolution by the current Ukrainian government.

In response, regions in eastern Ukraine — where pro-Russian sentiment is the strongest — saw separatists seize control with scant Russian assistance. These separatists were soon fighting against Ukrainian forces as Russian support began to increase.

According to the Russian government’s Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, more than 2,600 civilians died and at least 5,500 were wounded in fighting in the separatist regions of Ukraine as of February 2022. Many of them were killed or wounded by Ukrainian forces seeking to crush the separatists.

These figures are supported by data from the West. In January 2022, the United Nations recorded 3,106 conflict-related civilian deaths and as many as 7,000 wounded in fighting in Ukraine up to that point. During that period, most of the fighting was over separatist-controlled territory.

Growing threats to civilians

As Ukraine is increasingly provided with long-range weapons by the West, the potential for civilian casualties as a result of Ukrainian missile and long-range artillery attacks has increased.

While many of these weapons have good accuracy, they nonetheless are too often fired by both sides on the basis of inaccurate or flawed intelligence.

Even after the fighting has moved on from a particular area, the war leaves behind a legacy of unexploded munitions. These can range from unexploded bombs and artillery shells to mines.

In October 2022, for example, the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic reported that combat engineers had destroyed more than 20,000 “Lepestok” or “butterfly” mines on its territory. Western sources have suggested that both Ukraine and Russia have been using anti-personnel mines.

Cluster munitions are another particular threat to civilians long after the fighting has moved on from a given area. There have been reports of both the Russians and Ukrainians using cluster bombs to date. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions banning their use.

Cluster bomb use likely to increase

The United States — also not a signatory to the convention — has recently decided to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions from its own stocks. That decision can only increase their use by both Ukraine and Russia, meaning that civilians on both sides of the front line will inevitably fall victim to unexploded munitions over time.

The U.S. claims the munitions it plans to provide Ukraine will leave behind no more than three per cent of the munitions unexploded. Even if this is accurate — which is unlikely — the immediate effect of this decision “will be to knock away much of the moral ground Washington sits on in this war,” according to one BBC report. The longer-term impact will be more civilian deaths and maiming.

Since 2014 in Ukraine, at least 12,000 civilians have been killed and 22,000 wounded. Those figures continue to increase on both sides of the front line.

Claiming the moral high ground in any war isn’t just about justifying a war effort — it’s also about how a war is fought.

Civilian casualties in war are unavoidable but can be mitigated. Both Ukraine and Russia, sadly but inevitably, have plenty of civilian blood on their hands.

The points made in this article remind me of my discussions with Prof. Geoffrey Roberts who said that while Putin chose to start the war of February 2022, it is the west that has chosen to unnecessarily prolong the war to Ukraine’s utter destruction. – Natylie

By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, 7/31/23

In the early days, the war in Ukraine had not escalated into the dangerous NATO-Russia nightmare that it is today.

The massive amounts of death and destruction was not yet imagined. Though “the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians,” according to a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency in March 2022, “there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so.” The analyst said that “almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.” A retired Air Force officer, working with a “large military contractor advising the Pentagon” added that “the Russian military has actually been showing restraint in its long-range attacks.” These sources told Newsweek that Russia was not bombing indiscriminately and that the US dropped more missiles on the first day in Iraq in 2003 than Russia dropped in the first 24 days in Ukraine. Observing the US bombing of Iraq, including the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous, “British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties.” Instead, “The vast majority of [Russian] airstrikes are over the battlefield, with Russian aircraft providing “close air support” to ground forces. The remainder – less than 20 percent, according to U.S. experts – has been aimed at military airfields, barracks and supporting depots.” The DIA analyst concluded that “that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians.”

It was while the war was still at this stage that it could have been stopped. On February 27, just three days into the war, Russia and Ukraine announced that they were ready to hold talks in Belarus. In those and subsequent talks over the next several weeks, including the most promising talks of all in Istanbul, Ukraine and Russia were ready to stop the war on terms that met both of their goals.

But the US stopped the war from ending before the devastation began because the talks did not meet their goals. Putin “should . . . not be negotiated with,” the US and UK told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “the West was not.” The US “blocked” the negotiated end to the war because they “want[ed] the war to continue,” since meeting Ukraine’s goals was insufficient. “This is a war,” the US State Department explained, “that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.”

The three day war became a year and a half long war that escalated into the dangerous and devastating war it is today because the US forbade Ukraine from ending it on terms that satisfied them and pressured them into fighting on against Russia in pursuit of American goals. From this point on, all the probably hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths, the destruction of infrastructure and the loss of land became the joint responsibility of the US.

But neither American nor Ukrainian goals have been met. The war is going very badly for Ukraine and no amount of US help seems to be altering the battlefield. Barring an unlikely change in fortune, Ukraine is fighting on only to arrive at an inevitable negotiated end that will be tragically worse than the one they negotiated in Belarus and Istanbul.

That change of fortune hangs upon the so far suicidal counteroffensive. Since June 5, Ukraine has thrown its NATO trained troops and its NATO supplied tanks against the Russian defensive lines. And, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in that nearly two month period, Ukraine has suffered more than 26,000 deaths. They also lost at least a “startling” 20% of their NATO supplied tanks and armored vehicles in the first weeks of the counteroffensive.

What’s worse is that the US encouraged Ukraine to launch the counteroffensive and publicly broadcast their “very good chance for success” when, privately, they knew Ukraine was ill prepared. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons – from shells to warplanes – that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.” Incredibly, military officials were prepared to count on “Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness.”

But all the “courage and resourcefulness” is still being outweighed by the lack of training, weapons and troops. The New York Times reported on July 26 that Ukraine has started the “main thrust” of its counteroffensive, “pouring” thousands of reinforcements into the battle, “many of them trained and equipped by the West.”

Though it is hard to keep track of which attack is which, there have been reports of massive Ukrainian losses in recent days. The Times places the “main thrust” south of Orikhiv and farther south at Robotyne. An attempted Ukrainian advance from Novosanylivka south toward Robotyne and Tokmak turned into what one analyst called “possibly the worst calamity for Ukraine since the beginning of the offensive.” Another, referring to an offensive attempt in the “Rabotino-Orekhov direction,” that included Leopard tanks and Bradley armored vehicles, says that Russian forces “repulsed” the attempt with “horrific” losses to the Ukrainian armed forces. There are reports of several Leopards and Bradleys being destroyed. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that fifteen German Leopard tanks and twenty US Bradley armored vehicles were destroyed in one day. He also said that more than 200 more Ukrainian soldiers were “lost.”

On July 27, as the “main thrust” continued, Putin claimed that, in the past 24 hours, Ukraine “used a large amount of heavy hardware, around 50 pieces. Some 39 of them, namely 26 tanks and 13 armored vehicles were destroyed.”

The US pressed Ukraine, before the war had escalated into the devastation it now is, to continue fighting in pursuit of US goals when Ukrainian goals had been satisfied and the war could have ended. That has led to the loss of lives, the loss of land and the destruction of infrastructure. The US then encouraged a Ukrainian counteroffensive when they knew the Ukrainian armed forces “didn’t have all the training or weapons . . . that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.” That has led to horrific loss of additional life. The US has pursued a self-interested policy in pursuit if its own goals that has been callous and cruel to the people of Ukraine.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 7/31/23

After three weeks of travel around Northwest Russia, keeping an eye on the people and circumstances of daily life around me, my answer to the question in the title is ‘yes and no.’

On the one hand, the consumer society is going strong. Supermarkets are well stocked. Within Europe, Russia had the lowest rate of inflation in the food products sector during the past month: zero percent. When you read about export bans of one commodity or another, such as the ban on rice exports just imposed today by the Kremlin, the reason is found in the external world, not within Russia itself. The Kremlin was reacting to the ban on rice exports recently announced in India, which drove up global prices and would have led to Russian sales abroad of rice needed at home if the markets were left to their own devices.

Meanwhile we are told that the grain harvest in Russia this season may well show a record surplus, notwithstanding all the climatic abnormalities globally and within the Russian Federation. Russia represents 20% of world grain supplies, Ukraine, just 5%. In this light, Russia can easily meet world needs even if Ukraine does not export one bushel of wheat.

In one very important consumer market sector, automobiles, the reorganization of supply away from Europe and towards China has been almost seamless. The high-end cars from the PRC are more in evidence in St Pete by the week. On the main roads leading into the city, I see new Chinese brand dealerships opening here and there. I have ‘test driven’ these cars in taxi fleets and they are really impressive, not just to me as a passenger but from the remarks of drivers.

To be sure, the ruble is weak and various consumer electronics companies have announced price rises to come on devices imported from the West. This weakness has causes relating to the shift in the hydrocarbons trade from Western Europe to Asia, where contract settlements are not denominated in dollars. Hence there are fewer dollars and euros put up for auction on the Russian domestic bourse and the price of these currencies has followed the bidding.

Otherwise, despite the weak ruble I am each day surprised at how imported sea bass from Turkey or imported French premium quality Burgundy wine is on sale in the Petersburg supermarkets at prices less than half what we pay in Belgium for similar goods.

On the other side of the issue, one would have to be blind not to understand that the country is at war, considering the now omnipresent recruitment advertisements urging men to sign up as ‘contract’ soldiers for the war. I say ‘men,’ because the advertising billboards, posters and television ads are all addressed to males. They tell the reader that “combat is a man’s job.”

The appeal is openly and unapologetically sexist. But it also only accentuates the positive: ‘join your peers,’ etc. Judging by the models in these ads, men signing up would appear to be in their mid to upper 20s, with a second tranche in their 40s and 50s.There is no hint whatsoever that those who do not sign up are shirkers, cowards or pansies.

You see a lot more recruitment advertisements in St Petersburg and environs than you see actual soldiers in uniform. In my outlying borough of Pushkin, we have several military academies and so in the morning you can catch sight of a platoon doing their morning run. But that is nothing new.

The other day when riding a commuter train we were seated just across from a young soldier in his early 20s. Whereas the sartorial image of these guys used to be sad sack maybe a decade ago, I can say that this fellow’s uniform was very smart looking. And he had a self-assured demeanor.

What you do not see is any military bearing arms in civilian milieu.

Notwithstanding the appeal to Alpha males, television news reports also tell us that women are serving in armed forces. We see occasional interviews with women air force pilots. But the overriding theme with respect to women is that they serve as doctors or nurses who may treat wounded soldiers in the field on their way back to hospitals in central Russia. They are saving lives, not taking lives.

Meanwhile, for those who can bear watching war news on television, the narrative has been changing, especially in the past week. Until then, news of the material damage and bodily harm caused by daily Ukrainian bombardment of Donetsk city and other towns in the Donbas took up much of the news bulletins. Now the accent is on the destruction Russian forces are dealing out to the Ukrainians as Kiev directs larger scale attacks and brings into play its strategic reserves, especially in the Zaporozhie region. The new Ukrainian offensive appears to be no more successful than previous probing maneuvers in breaking though the dense Russian defense lines.

Russian military experts on the leading talk shows who showed great reserve about predicting the future course of the conflict lest Russians be overconfident a week ago now appear radiant and ready to confide that the Ukrainians never got the equipment they needed to make their counter-offensive a success.

As I noted in a recent essay, the Russian military command has been biding its time until it is certain that Ukraine was already committing its reserves to battle and would soon run dry. Now that time is approaching. We see that the Russians are opening an offensive in the northeast, in the Kharkov region.

There is good reason to believe that the Russian advance around Kharkov is yielding results. In the past week there was talk of starting reconstruction work in the border region of Belgorod, where the Ukrainians had made armed incursions six weeks ago from Kharkov and had destroyed or damaged a large swathe of residences by artillery strikes. The cry went up in Russia to take Kharkov and put an end to these calamities. Evidently the Russian military is succeeding in silencing the Ukrainian guns.

Against this background of the changes in the correlation of forces in Russia’s favor, I am stunned that U.S. and other observers and commentators are not taking note. A very good example of this blindness or ignorance was an article put out in the past week by owner-publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel and James Carden, who may be said to represent the supposedly enlightened views of Progressive Democrats in the United States. The co-authors called for peace talks based on compromises by both sides to the conflict. In particular, Ukraine would accept neutrality and Russia would pay war reparations. War reparations!

These authors like so many talking heads in the West do not have the necessary linguistic skills to access Russian news sources on their own. They depend wholly on propagandists in the State Department for the raw facts from which they can spin their reasonable compromises [vanden Heuvel does speak and read Russian – NB]. I humbly submit that this war will either end on Russia’s terms or it will escalate thanks to American miscalculations and obstinacy to the point of a nuclear exchange that puts the survival of humankind in peril.

Meanwhile Secretary of State Antony Blinken is telling reporters that the dangers of human extinction from nuclear war are no greater than the dangers humanity faces from climate change. Goebels would be proud of him.

Link here

Gonazlo Lira’s twitter thread referenced in this video can be found here.

Mark Sleboda’s tweet referenced in this article can be found here.