The U.S. will send Ukraine an undisclosed number of medium-range cluster bombs and an array of rockets, artillery and armored vehicles in a military aid package totaling about $375 million, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Officials expect an announcement on Wednesday, as global leaders meet at the U.N. General Assembly, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses his appearance there to shore up support and persuade the U.S. to allow his troops to use long-range weapon s to strike deeper into Russia. The following day, Zelenskyy meets with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington.
I thought we weren’t allowed to use cluster munitions?
The US didn’t sign that treaty AFAIK. Not sure about Ukraine though.
Also, can’t commit war crimes if there’s no war. And Russia says this isn’t a war.
I know you’re being facetious, but they’re considered war crimes even if it’s not a full declared war.
Special military operation crimes then!
Russia did declare it a war a while ago. They dropped the stupid military operation pretense.
Ukraine didn’t, and neither did Russia.
It’s like with incendiary weapons: Not war crimes as such, but for fuck’s sake don’t use them near civilians. Ultimately they’re not doing anything that an artillery barrage couldn’t do, including leaving unexploded ordinance around: When there’s lots of soft targets you don’t need all those explosions but only shrapnel so you can send a single shot and cause that shrapnel instead of twenty causing shrapnel and pointless explosions.
Cluster munitions are bad when you’re an invading army bc some of the explosives fail to fire, endangering civilians who come across them later. Ukraine, however, is using them on its own territory to combat russia who 1) is already using cluster munitions with a greater fail rate than the ones the US is providing Ukraine, and 2) deliberately mines the areas they invade in a way to kill civilians (e.g. setting up a mine to explode if you try to move the corpse of a beloved family dog). So in this case, using the US’s cluster munitions to get russia out is a net positive.
Whereby there also videos from the first weeks where Russians left grenades as booby traps in kitchen cabinets and dishwashers?
Pretty sure the US is one of the few nations that never said they wouldn’t use them.
Only if you care about civilians
the US is one of few nations that didn’t sign that treaty, along with landmines.
We pretend it’s ok by saying that we have high accuracy high precision cluster bombs. Though the ones getting to ukraine aren’t, that entire place is also littered with minefields, so it makes no difference lmao.
Why would you want precise cluster bombs? The whole point of a cluster munition is to spread the effect over a broad area.
enemy troop trenches.
You can blast it shortly above the trench, accurate enough that a small amount of cluster munitions can explode killing the most people most effectively.
in some cases, this isn’t advantageous, in the one atacms that ukraine sent over an airfield for example, having more clusters is obviously most important there.
Also i take it you know nothing about them so i’ll expound upon my previous comment as i left out a few details. Modern US cluster munitions have individually targetting clusters. This means they can only detonate the actually important munitions, while leaving the rest as dead munitions, or even detonating in air to self destruct (still dangerous, but not as much) so you can kill a group of vehicles, without carpet bombing the rest of the area.
TL;DR more precise cluster bombs allow for using less cluster munitions, which means less collateral, and more damage for the given explosives. I.E. more effective weapon.