The US administration said that it had received ‘written assurances’ from Ukraine that it would use cluster bombs carefully. Nonetheless, the munition will provide an additional risk to civilians.
It’s going to be military targets which will be fucked up.
unless you have data i don’t, the article seems to pretty definitively refute this point. overwhelmingly the people impacted by cluster munition use are civilians (97% of casualties were civilians in 2021) both in and outside of Ukraine, and their usage has a very long tail of fatalities.[1] there is no reason to think that even if they’re tailored specifically to nebulous military use against Russian soldiers that won’t also be the outcome here, because it is literally everywhere else they get used.
Vietnam and Cambodia are the poster children for this: the countries still have have dozens of civilian fatalities a year from cluster bombing ordinance, and it’s been 48 years since the Vietnam War ended. ↩︎
unless you have data i don’t, the article seems to pretty definitively refute this point. overwhelmingly the people impacted by cluster munition use are civilians (97% of casualties were civilians in 2021) both in and outside of Ukraine, and their usage has a very long tail of fatalities.[1] there is no reason to think that even if they’re tailored specifically to nebulous military use against Russian soldiers that won’t also be the outcome here, because it is literally everywhere else they get used.
Vietnam and Cambodia are the poster children for this: the countries still have have dozens of civilian fatalities a year from cluster bombing ordinance, and it’s been 48 years since the Vietnam War ended. ↩︎