The White House announced that the U.S.-supplied cluster munitions have already been used on the battlefield and are working “effectively,” according to national security advisor John Kirby.
“They are using them appropriately,” Kirby said. “They’re using them effectively and they are actually having an impact on Russia’s defensive formations and Russia’s defensive maneuvering. I think I can leave it at that.”
The video shows dozens of bomblets exploding over Russian positions and soldiers fleeing the blast zone.
While Ukraine was raining cluster bombs down on Russian soldiers, Russia was raining missiles down on Ukrainian civilians. Missiles struck the port city of Odessa for the third day. Moscow says it was in response to the heavy damage inflicted on the Kerch Bridge — the only bridge connecting Crimea with Russia — during a drone strike last week. While Russia was able to partially reopen the bridge, Moscow closed it again after a strike on a nearby ammo dump.
Both sides have already used cluster munitions, and you have to wonder how thousands of cluster bombs arrived in Ukraine less than a week after it was announced that Ukraine was getting them.
Perhaps they were already there.
While Russia has used cluster munitions far more extensively, Ukraine has also allegedly deployed these weapons during the war, using Soviet-era stocks or shells obtained from other countries. A Human Rights Watch report released earlier this month said Ukraine’s use of the weapons “caused numerous deaths and serious injuries to civilians” in attacks in the city of Izyum and other locations in 2022. Ukraine has denied using the munitions.
Most of Washington’s NATO allies have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a compact that bans their use and production, but the United States, Russia and Ukraine never signed the treaty.
This week, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan pushed back on the idea that sending the munitions called U.S. moral authority into question.
“Our moral authority and Ukraine’s moral authority in this conflict comes from the fact that we are supporting a country under a brutal, vicious attack by its neighbor with missiles and bombs raining down in its cities, killing its civilians, destroying its schools, its churches, its hospitals,” Sullivan said. “And the idea that providing Ukraine with a weapon in order for them to be able to defend their homeland, protect their civilians, is somehow a challenge to our moral authority — I find questionable.”
When 100 countries — including most U.S. allies — have forbidden the use of cluster munitions because they kill civilians indiscriminately and for years after a conflict is over, it’s perfectly legitimate to question our moral authority to use them — if the U.S. had any moral authority left in the first place.
The open-source intelligence website OSINTdefender posted a video of an attack in the Donetsk region where it was reported that a prominent Russian war blogger was killed.
Footage that is reported to show the 1st Confirmed use of U.S. Cluster Munitions by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against a recent Russian Assault near the City of Krasnohorivka in the Donetsk Region, during which it is the claimed the Russian Mil-Blogger, Mikhail Luchin was Killed. pic.twitter.com/wssiWDZA6y
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 20, 2023
Since Ukraine was already using cluster munitions, perhaps it’s best to stop jabbering about “moral authority” and work to end the war.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member