Russia - threadbanned users in OP

After a year and a half it seems people and the world still aren’t taking this war seriously.

Still that underline sympathy for Russia and forgetting all the misery it has brought on Ukraine.

As if we should feel any guilt in using cluster bombs against an invading country who are using the same bombs themselves and commit war crimes daily and for the whole world to see on top of kidnapping and raping kids.

The world has truly lost itself.

Never again we were told….

Bit surprised by this below. Can’t see how it does much to affect nato unity?

US decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine 'runs the risk of fracturing NATO' Joe Biden's decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine "runs the risk" of fracturing the NATO alliance, a former chief of general staff for the British Army has said. 

When making the announcement, the US president said he decided to send the controversial weapons, which have been banned by 120 countries, because Kyiv is "running out of ammunition". 

Speaking to Sky News, General Lord Dannatt said it must have been a "very difficult decision", and he is not alone in being "very uncomfortable" about it. 

"From personal experience, when I was commander British forces and we went into Kosovo in 1999, the only two soldiers that we lost were as a result of unexploded munitions from NATO's cluster weapons, which at that stage were still allowed to be used," he said. 

"I can understand why the Americans want to provide this additional firepower to Ukraine to help its counteroffensive along.

"But as we're coming up to Vilnius NATO summit, where one of the most important things is that we show the unity of NATO together, I think to announce deployment of these weapons at this moment when so many other NATO countries have banned them, runs the risk of fracturing to an extent that NATO harmony." 

My post was about the pliability and sham of the term “human rights” as used and weaponised against democratically elected governments by various groups and institutions in the west nowadays.

You oppose the American foreign policy, good for you. Carry on.

Explosives are explosives, no matter what fancy names they are given, The problem I have with cluster bombs is that as they use parachutes to float down, but the parachutes also mean that they can be blown way off course from their target area, and second, too many fail to explode on impact, and remain lethal for a long time. In this respect, the Chinese and Russian made cluster bombs are the worst offenders. Having said that , there's some bang off them, and I would not like to be anyone on the receiving end of them.

It is Ukraine deploying these munitions. Clearly they are morally entitled to determine if using these weapons is the right call versus being Infested with the current worst human rights abusers in the world.

It has nothing to do with the human rights of Russian soldiers. The issue is the threat that cluster munitions present to the civilian population long after they are deployed. In other words Ukrainians are putting their own population in danger by resorting to these weapons. Places where cluster munitions are used at scale become uninhabitable for years. 

I would trust Ukrainians with any and all decisions regarding their land, the well-being of their people and the future of their children, as a matter of course but especially so at this juncture in time. I am sure no decision in that government is taken lightly. If they don’t want the cluster ammunitions, they will say so.

What's more concerning is the manner in which the offensive is taking place.

People mocked Wagner for the slow pace of their advance at Bakhmut and the tactics they employed. Ukraine have been doing something very similar in the counter attack at the same place for the last 2 months. There are many videos and clips out there, you can go back in time in the Deepstate map to see the daily advances. What we're seeing is well-trained Ukrainian forces going trench to trench where advances in a day if they happen are measured in metres.

You can see some of the formations involved with the current assault on Klishchiikva. The Azov Brigade, Aidar, 5th assault, the forces Ukraine are using aren't insignificant.

It would seem to me that the war is being fought on Russian terms. The attrition that an attacking force will suffer is greater than the territorial gains that are being made.

Russia has mined much of the Ukrainian lands anyway. The whole eastern part of the country will need to be carefully demined afterwards so a few extras won't matter much.

Besides, they could always drop a few on the mine fields and help things along.

Speaking of Prigozhin - The last audio message from him was about a week ago and I don't believe there has been any video footage of him since he left Rostov. His plane is flying all over the place but there's no guarantee that he's actually on it. The Belarussians are saying he's not there and the new Wagner camp there is entirely empty. He could very well be either dead or in captivity right now.

If they have a need for the cluster bombs on specific targets, they will use them and should.

Listening to a Muppet on sky talk about bit of NATO fracturing over their use. What boll78.

I largely agree with you but he has a point in that conditions now favour the Russians, it's always easier to be the poor soldier behind 6 feet of reinforced concrete shooting at the professional soldier running across the field.

That doesn't mean that Russia will hold what they have, they might or might not, but freeing it will be difficult and very costly in terms of Ukrainian lives.

Hopefully the cluster bombs will make up for the chronic shortfall in artillery shells being sent to Ukraine.

Hopefully as well, we'll see a collapse in the Russian lines and people fleeing but that is not probably going to happen.

To be honest I think the cluster munitions will prove decisive in breaking Russian resistance. I can see morale in the Russian Army decreasing even further as a consequence. I won't be surprised if we hear about Russian soldiers being shot by their own commanders because they want to surrender

Rishi Sunak has said the UK "discourages" the use of cluster bombs after the US agreed to send them to Ukraine.

I reckon they will be that tightly controlled as to where and where they can't be deployed,they might not be the game changer people are thinking, Western tanks and IFVs haven't been effective as people originally thought either, they need to keep changing tactics until they find the right ones for the right situations

Yes, I imagine Ukraine has been told only to use them on Russian positions that are not near civilian areas. It's clear the counter offensive is going slower than some would like due to the time Russia has had to dig in, but I think the cluster bombs will lead to speedier gains by Ukraine once they start being deployed on the battlefield.

And yet the Chief Sergeant of the 3rd Assault Brigade (recently seen in a widely circulated video taking control of Russian positions) says that their attrition rate is way lower than expected. In this video, https://youtu.be/zfpPl9_tjes from about 4min, he debunks a claim made by some propagandist, pointing out that while he's not authorised to give actual numbers, he can say that they'd prepared for an attrition rate of 14% per day but so far counting KIA & MIA-presumed-dead together, they're running at just 2% per month.

The mythical "3-to-1" ratio has long since been rendered useless as a reliable statistic for this war, and you can see why in just about all of the trench-clearing videos. Teams of 4-10 Ukrainians go in and remove 20 Russians from effective combat; and rarely does any less than the original number of Ukranians come back alive. "Markus" also points out that most their injured return to active service; the same is not true for the Russians.

All-in-all, everything seems to suggest that the Ukranians are quite happy with slow but methodical progress and minimal casulaties, whatever the ADHD Western media might want.

I think you are right. The question is when?

Unfortunately it won't work like that when in a few months or years when Nato will be getting blamed for civilian casualties caused by them especially on children, it's nato who gets the blame and Nato will likely have clean up the mess afterwards.

It's not as simple as it's been made out of be