Ukraine’s much-touted “counteroffensive” appears to be stuck in neutral at the moment. It proves that mediocre or even poor soldiers can do very well on the defensive when properly protected by good old-fashioned field works. Russia had several months to prepare for Ukraine’s attack and they put that time to good use by building a complex series of trenches in depth.
At this rate, Ukraine can’t win. In fact, in a war of attrition, which is what the conflict has devolved into, Ukraine will lose badly. But Biden and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky aren’t going to give up easily. Instead of looking to negotiate, Zelensky is doubling down.
Biden has agreed to give Zelensky cluster munitions. Both sides are already using these lethal munitions in Ukraine, even though most nations have banned them. The reason for the ban was made very clear after the Vietnam War.
Vietnam has been dealing with the aftermath of the use of cluster bombs for 40 years. And people are still getting killed by unexploded ordnance.
“During the Vietnam War, the US used cluster bombs in air strikes against targets in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Of the 260 million cluster bomblets that rained down on Laos between 1964 and 1973, particularly on Xieng Khouang province, 80 million failed to explode. As of 2009, about 7,000 people have been injured or killed by explosives left from the Vietnam War era in Vietnam’s Quảng Trị province alone,” according to Wikipedia.
The U.S. military is assuring us almost all of these cluster bombs are going to explode.
The decision to supply cluster munitions bypasses a U.S. law prohibiting the production, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent. A Pentagon spokesman, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Thursday that the United States would be “carefully selecting” cluster munitions for Ukraine that have a “dud” rate of 2.35 percent or below, referring to the percentage of submunitions each shell carries that would remain unexploded after the shell was fired.
A failure rate of 2.35% is not the same as a failure rate of 1%. The Biden administration is thumbing its nose at United States law and daring Congress to do something about it.
The administration’s excuse for breaking the law? Russia is also using cluster munitions, only their bombs fail at a higher rate than ours.
So there.
The Pentagon noted that Russia has already been using cluster bombs in Ukraine with even higher failure rates. A United Nations investigation found Ukraine has likely used them as well, though the country has denied doing so.
The Pentagon noted that Russia has already been using cluster bombs in Ukraine with even higher failure rates. A United Nations investigation found Ukraine has likely used them as well, though the country has denied doing so.
Officials are planning to send artillery shells to Ukraine, with each containing 88 separate bomblets, according to US media reports. They would be fired from Howitzer artillery weapons already deployed by the Ukrainian army.
The aid package also includes Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles, air defence missiles and anti-mine equipment, officials told reporters.
Ukrainian peasants will be stumbling over these cluster munitions in their fields for the next 50 years because their president has delusions that he can recapture thousands of square miles of territory that Russia refuses to give up. He is bleeding his country dry and spilling the blood of an entire generation of Ukrainians in a futile quest to draw NATO and the United States into the conflict to do the hard fighting for him.
The U.S. will not go to war to win back Crimea or any other part of Ukraine currently under Russian control. If I were Zelensky, I’d recognize that this is a generational conflict and that some Ukrainians in territories occupied by Russia may not want to return to Ukraine’s control.
If that’s the case, Zelensky would be smart to cut his losses and live to fight another day.
