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Use of Depleted Uranium in Ukraine Could Spark Global Health Crisis: Here’s Why

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 28.03.2023

The US and Britain expended over 2,000 tons of depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Syria. Now, London plans to hand DU shells to Ukraine. British and US officials insist the weapons are safe, but what does the evidence say? Sputnik investigates.

The political fallout over the United Kingdom’s decision to send DU anti-tank shells to Kiev for use along with its Challenger 2 tanks continues to spread. On Saturday, President Putin said he didn’t buy Britain’s assurances that the munitions wouldn’t cause any health effects, and that taking into account the toxic radioactive dust generated by the shells, they “of course amount to a weapon of the most dangerous kind.”

Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense (RCBD) Troops, echoed the president’s concerns, predicting that the weapons’ use would “cause irreparable harm” to the health of soldiers and the civilian population alike, with DU compounds expected to remain in the soil and affect people, animals and the environment for many years to come.

Russia’s concerns are not unjustified. Throughout the past year, Russian intelligence and the RCBD Troops issued report after worrying report regarding Kiev’s ambitions to build nuclear weapons, scenarios involving false flags using radioactive dirty bombs, and a long list of evidence of dangerous US and European-funded and coordinated experiments with biological weapons at Ukraine-based biolabs.

But depleted uranium poses a special kind of danger, due both to its availability and record of use.

Discovered during the Cold War by US and British scientists as an effective but controversial armor-piercing weapon, DU tank and artillery shells and air-dropped bombs are stuffed with the uranium byproducts left over from the production of nuclear energy.

The militaries of NATO, the USSR, China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and South Africa stockpiled hundreds of thousands of tons of DU materials, but the WWIII scenario they were training for never became a reality.

But having acquired the weapons, the US and its NATO allies quickly found places to use them, overlooking all potential international legal and moral barriers. DU shells and bombs were deployed during the Gulf War in 1991, in the bombardment of Bosnia and the rump state of Yugoslavia in 1995 and 1999, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2001-2021 occupation of Afghanistan, the dirty war against Syria, and, allegedly, the 2011 NATO air campaign in Libya.

Iraq and the former Yugoslavia were hit the hardest, with upwards of 2,300 tons of DU used in the Middle Eastern country in 1991 and 2003-2005, and as much as 30 tons strewn across the Balkans between the mid-to-late 1990s. Almost every country in which DU has been used has reported a surge in deadly ailments, including cancers, strokes, and birth defects. In Iraq, cancer rates in DU-affected areas jumped from 40 cases per 100,000 in 1991 to 800 per 100,000 in 1995, and 1,600 per 100,000 by 2005. Serbs, Bosnians, Kosovar Albanians, Montenegrins and other peoples of the former Yugoslavia suffered a similar fate, with Serbia today facing some of the highest cancer rates in Europe, with many attributing the spike in illness to NATO’s DU deployment two-and-a-half decades ago.

‘Anecdotal Evidence’ Claiming Real Lives

The US and UK governments have bent over backwards to avoid admitting that depleted uranium is the cause of the epidemic of cancers facing Iraqis, Serbs and others, suggesting evidence regarding their effects is “anecdotal” and “circumstantial.”

In 2021, British and US researchers released a much-cited study which concluded that low-level exposure to pesticides and sarin nerve gas, not depleted uranium, were the “most likely” causes of Gulf War Syndrome – the chronic disorder faced by about hundreds of thousands of US vets who took part in the 1991 Gulf War, and who now face a heightened incidence of cancers, respiratory and neurological illnesses, and other diseases.

“The British Army has used depleted uranium in its armor piercing shells for decades,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said in a statement last week meant to “debunk” Moscow’s concerns. “Russia knows this, but is deliberately trying to disinform. Independent research by scientists from groups such as the Royal Society has assessed that any impact to personal health and the environment from the use of depleted uranium munitions is likely to be low.”

But independent academics and researchers who have studied the weapons’ use and impact tell a very different story, as do those who know victims of depleted uranium poisoning, including Iraqi and Balkan civilians, but also NATO troops tasked with handling and deploying the toxic weapons.

“[Coalition forces] used depleted uranium shells in Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf, Baqubah and Fallujah; they were extensively used in Fallujah in 2004, and today, about 15 percent of the children born in this city suffer from congenital deformities, which is a very high rate. About 5 percent die from these deformities,” Dr. Souad Naji Al-Azzawi, a prolific Iraqi researcher specializing in hazardous waste contamination, told Sputnik in an interview.

“They completely destroyed Fallujah with these and other weapons,” the academic said, noting that radioactive contaminants spread by DU munitions have polluted the entire region’s food supply.

Al-Azzawi said there are roughly 5,000 DU-contaminated tanks and other armored vehicles destroyed by the coalition in the 1991 war and after the 2003 invasion spread across nearly two dozen large tank grave yards around Basra. “Whenever a sandstorm blows through the area, an additional dose of radiation moves from these sites towards the civilian population,” she noted.

Srjan Aleksic, a Serbian lawyer who represents victims of the 1999 NATO bombings, says DU has killed and sickened many of his relatives and clients.

“My mother died from depleted uranium, as did many of my relatives from the village of Bushtranje. NATO officials themselves admitted that they bombed Plackovica Mountain, overlooking the city of Vranje, and four villages near the border with Macedonia. There were large numbers of troops and equipment near Vranje, and NATO bombed these villages with depleted uranium every day,” Aleksic recalled in an interview.

“In 2005 alone, an area of about two square kilometers was cleared of depleted uranium. Our army did that. They put up a wire fence and wrote ‘Hazard to Life: Do Not Approach’. But nobody knew about that until 2005,” the lawyer added.

Aleksic hopes to take a case against NATO to Belgrade’s Higher Court later this year, representing a Serbian officer who filed to sue the alliance in early 2021, but subsequently died, with a health checkup finding levels of uranium contaminants in his body to be off the charts. NATO claims immunity from prosecution, but the attorney hopes to win compensation for the victim’s family anyway, saying the court could reach a verdict without the alliance’s participation.

“There is no immunity from criminal responsibility, especially when it comes to responsibility to civilians. My mother got sick, my relatives got sick, my clients got sick. They had nothing to do with the war; I am not getting into politics. I’m just talking about the consequences,” Aleksic stressed.

The lawyer explained that his efforts to defend victims of the 1999 bombings got started after working with Angelo Fiore Tartaglia, a Rome-based attorney who has spent some 20 years of his life representing Italian soldiers injured by DU, and their families.

“He has been very successful. Many Italian soldiers have cancer, especially those who were in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 when NATO bombed it with depleted uranium, as well as Kosovo and Metohija. To date, he has obtained 330 [favorable] final judgements – 400 Italian soldiers have died from the effects of cancer – and he has proven a causal link between depleted uranium and their adverse health effects,” Aleksic said.

Domenico Leggiero is a retired Italian military pilot and weapons inspector who saw firsthand how many of his colleagues began to “fall ill with cancers, just like falling leaves,” after service in the former Yugoslavia. Leggiero now heads Osservatorio Militaire, an Italian military watchdog that seeks to shed light on the consequences of DU use on Italian troops.

“We couldn’t figure out where the cancers were coming from until we and our medics started taking biopsy samples from troops that had gotten sick, or even died. So we would take the primary biopsy of tumors and look at them not as medics, but as physicists, and realized that within these biopsy samples, there were materials that shouldn’t have been there,” Leggiero told Sputnik.

“We’re talking cadmium, we’re talking mineral substances, heavy metals. Furthermore, these heavy metals all had a well-defined shape and size – a very small size – 10-100 times smaller than PM-10 [particles with a diameter of 10 microns or less, ed.]. They basically had a spherical shape,” the soldier explained.

In research, Leggiero and his colleagues discovered that these particles were so minute and numerous that they were could disburse in the air over long periods of time, get inhaled by exposed civilians and military personnel, and enter the food chain after being deposited on crops.

The veteran said the Italian military’s commanders “knew” about the health risks associated with DU munitions since they were provided with this information by the Pentagon, but ordinary soldiers “were not warned.”

“I am in possession of all possible and imaginable documentation, including the rules on how to treat material contaminated with uranium. These rules were established at the level of the general staff; they were never issued among the troops, and therefore we essentially had a massacre,” Leggiero said.

‘Depleted Uranium Makes No Distinction Between Nationalities’

Dr. Hans-Christof von Sponeck, a former UN assistant secretary-general and UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq who resigned in 2000 in protest against the UN’s sanctions regime, which he said constituted a violation of the Geneva Conventions, has no doubt in his mind about the consequences of the US and Britain’s use of DU on Iraqi civilians.
“I will not pronounce on the question of whether the use of depleted uranium is legal or illegal – this debate is still taking place elsewhere. What I can state without hesitation is that I have seen the victims of depleted uranium munitions used by the US military in southern Iraq. On several occasions, I visited the Mother and Child Hospital in Basra in 1999 and saw young mothers with their horrifically deformed babies, something that had not existed before the 1991 war,” Sponeck told Sputnik.

“Let me also add that depleted uranium does not make a distinction between different nationalities. British and American soldiers deployed to southern Iraq and their families, also became the victims of depleted uranium, as court cases in the UK and the US confirm…Should depleted uranium munitions be used in Ukraine, it would mean that people in the area, soldiers and civilians alike, would be victimized even though the dangers of such munitions are well known in 2023,” the veteran German diplomat stressed.

What Makes DU Charges Difficult to Pursue?

“Based on what we know, depleted uranium will be bad for health and likely cause cancer. However, linking depleted uranium exposure to its effects using epidemiology is extremely difficult,” says Dr. Keith Baverstock, a veteran University of Eastern Finland biologist and former head of the Radiation Protection Program at the World Health Organization’s European office.

For one thing, Baverstock said, “exposure is very local to where a depleted uranium munition impacts but the depleted uranium, particularly in arid conditions, persists on the surface of the ground, so defining an exposed population is also difficult.” On top of that, the security situation in some affected countries, particularly Iraq, makes meaningful epidemiological research next to impossible, according to the scientist.

“However, we have information from animal and laboratory studies that tell us that DNA will be damaged if inhaled depleted uranium dust crosses the blood/air barrier in the lung (it can become systemic), and thus the normal functioning of cells, including germ cells, could be impaired and thus health effects, including cancer and birth defects, are likely risks in persons exposed to depleted uranium dust via inhalation,” the academic said.

“As a public health scientist, I regard these weapons as illegal, as do some EU countries,” Baverstock added.

Cancer Rates Double Those of Hiroshima

Chris Busby is a physical chemist, internal ionizing radiation expert and former senior researcher for a 2000s UK Ministry of Defense study examining the effects of DU weapons on veterans of the First Gulf War.

In an extensive, wide-ranging and highly illuminating interview with Sputnik, Dr. Busby explained how he and a group of British and Iraqi colleagues carried out extensive, first-hand, on-the-ground research into oncological diseases and child mortality in Iraq in the mid-to-late 2000s. Research led them to discover that cancer rates in Fallujah – specifically those associated with radiation, like leukemia and lymphoma, were higher than those in Hiroshima, the Japanese city hit with a US atomic bomb in 1945, and not just by a little, but by a factor of two or even more, depending on the cancer type.

“We found out the high level of infant mortality within the first year of life and the cause of these deaths were congenital malformations. We also [found a] skewed birth sex ratio, which is another sign of genetic damage associated with radiation exposure. We put all of these results together and concluded that there had been some very large genetic damage event which occurred around the time of the Fallujah [campaign],” the academic said.

Smoking Gun

Busby recalled how at the time, the Americans denied using DU munitions, prompting him and his colleagues to examine the hair of Iraqi women whose children suffered birth defects. That’s when they found what looks like smoking gun evidence of a direct correlation between the genetic mutations and DU use.

“There’s a method called ICP-MS, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry, in which you can take a hair sample and you can dissolve it in acid, and then you can measure the atoms inside the hair sample and see what the concentration of all these different elements are. So we looked at 52 elements in the hair of 20 mothers of children with congenital malformations, and we found that there was an anomalously high level of uranium. The only anomaly we found associated with an element which can cause congenital malformations was uranium. And we found that. Arab women have very long hair. We know the rate at which hair grows, so we cut the hair into little slices and measured the uranium in each of the slices going back to the first bit. So we [could] get a graph of the uranium in the hair going right the way back to about 2005. And what we found is that the uranium went up, when we went back in time. So clearly there was an increase in uranium round about the time just after Fallujah battle, which then reduced as time went on, obviously because it got excreted from the system. So we had more or less proof, that uranium was the cause of all of these congenital malformations, genetic damage, sex ratio and extraordinary high level of cancer,” the scientist said.

Busby says that one of the factors making DU so deadly is its ability to bind strongly to DNA – a factor the scientific community has known about since the 1950s. As uranium burns, it produces microscopic volatile particles which behave like a gas and can contaminate wide swathes of territory, not only the environment surrounding battlefields, but neighboring countries or even distant regions. The academic pointed out, for example, that filters in the UK looking out for uranium picked up contamination from Iraq in 2003.

Another issue, which Dr. Busby said he discovered mostly independently, and which he presented to the MoD’s Depleted Uranium Oversight Board in 2004, is uranium’s very high atomic number (the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom), which he said turns it into “a sort of amplifier for normal radiation.”

“We all live in an environment where we get gamma rays that come through our body and go out… If you’ve got uranium inside you, then it intercepts this [radiation] because of its high atomic number and all its electrons. In my opinion, and I’ve written quite a lot about this, this is the reason why uranium is very dangerous. First of all, it binds to DNA. Secondly, it causes these photo electrons to be omitted into the DNA. And all studies that have been done of people exposed to uranium showed massive chromosome damage. So when they look to see the chromosomes in their cells, in the peripheral blood cells, they find massive amounts of chromosome damage that leads to genetic effects – cancer, birth defects and so forth. So that’s the reason why uranium is so dangerous,” the academic emphasized.

‘There’s Nothing to Do Except Wait for Them to Die’

Busby noted that once uranium contaminant particles enter the body, they don’t go away. Instead, they sit inside the victim, “shooting off little cannonballs all the time, close into the cells,” into the DNA, until a tumor is formed.

Recalling visits to Iraqi hospitals and conversations with local doctors treating people suffering from the DU usage after the First Gulf War, the scientist recalled how doctors told him that there was nothing they could do to combat the disease thanks to the tough sanctions regime against Iraq.

Busby emphasized that even with access to the right medicines and medical care, “to be honest, there’s not much you can do” for those affected.

“If you’ve got the sorts of pictures that we see and that I have, of the children with congenital malformations, there’s nothing you can do except throw your hands up and wait for them to die. I talked to a number of families while I was in the hospitals and looking at the poor children with leukemia lying there in beds. They were going to die, that’s it. There’s nothing you can do. And the contamination of the area is a public health nightmare, because the doctors can’t do anything,” the academic said.

Putin ‘Absolutely Right’ to Be Concerned

Saying that he’s familiar with President Putin’s remarks on the dangers posed by the potential use of DU weapons in Ukraine, Busby said the Russian leader was “absolutely right” to be upset and concerned.
“President Putin has accurately identified this as a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon of indiscriminate effect. The British and the Americans continue to cling to their crazy theory that these radioactive substances which bind to DNA are effectively harmless and have no genetic or indiscriminate effects on populations. In this case, I just have to say that the British are wrong, that this substance is contaminating Europe and it will cause all of the effects that it caused in Iraq that I have shown. It will cause all those effects in Germany, and Luxembourg, and France, and Sweden, and the Baltic States and long list of countries which stand between Ukraine and the United Kingdom,” the observer stressed.

The problem today, according to Dr. Busby, is that the military planners in Washington and London see DU as a “magic” anti-tank weapon. “It’s inconceivable that the military would allow anyone to stop them using [DU] in a real war where you want to win, and they don’t really care about the people that die as a result of all of this, the collateral damage…the cancers downwind, the congenital malformations, the weeping parents and all the rest of it,” the scientist summed up.

March 28, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Here’s why HRW deliberately only scratched the surface in exploring Ukraine’s use of banned ‘petal’ mines

 PFM-1 anti-personnel land mine found in a field, near the town of Artyomovsk, Donetsk People’s Republic © Viktor Antonyuk / Sputnik
By Eva Bartlett | RT | March 28, 2023

Since Ukraine dropped hundreds of mines on the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in July, 104 people have fallen victim to the internationally-banned PFM-1 ‘petal’ (otherwise known as ‘butterfly’) devices. Nine of them are children. Of which three died.

Among the most recent civilians to be injured, on March 19, were two 60-year-old men. On February 26, a woman in her sixties was wounded in her neighborhood. On February 14, a teenager stepped on a petal mine near a school. These are just a few documented examples from recent weeks.

The first wave of over 40 victims came within the first few weeks after Ukrainian forces deployed the mines over Donetsk en masse in July 2022, and the number has more than doubled since. Since then I, along with other reporters on the ground, have documented their lingering presence and the civilian victims.

NGO reports… selectively

After signing the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty in 1999, Kiev was obligated to destroy its stockpile of 6 million PFM-1s. It denies using them, but abundant evidence incriminates Kiev in this particular war crime. While the West has yet to turn its attention to the victims of the  petal mines in the Donbass, reports of Ukraine using them elsewhere have emerged.

In its January 2023 report on banned landmines, the Human Rights Watch NGO notes, “In 2021, Ukraine reported to the UN secretary-general that 3.3 million stockpiled PFM mines still need to be destroyed.” HRW then advised Ukraine to investigate itself for its use of the prohibited mines.

The report is titled “Ukraine: Banned Landmines Harm Civilians. Ukraine Should Investigate Forces’ Apparent Use; Russian Use Continues,” implying that not only is Russia also deploying the petal mines, but that Russia’s use of them is beyond question, while Kiev’s use is open to debate.

Yet, much like in 2020, when the UN accused Russia of war crimes in Syria based on “we say so” and unnamed sources, you won’t find proof of Russia’s use of petal mines in the HRW report. In fact, buried there is a HRW admission that it “has not verified claims of Russian forces using PFM mines in the armed conflict.” This is a standard media tactic: boldly state one thing in a headline and quietly clarify the opposite in the body of the article, which most people won’t bother reading.

On the other hand, HRW claims it interviewed over 100 people, “including witnesses to landmine use, victims of landmines, first responders, doctors, and Ukrainian de-miners,” regarding Ukraine’s use of the objects in Izium (a city in the Kharkov region, north of Donetsk) while it was briefly under Moscow’s control. The HRW team entered the city after Russian forces withdrew in September. Everyone interviewed, the report noted, “said they had seen mines on the ground, knew someone who was injured by one, or had been warned about their presence during Russia’s occupation of Izium.”

The testimony records that the areas were all, “close to where Russian military forces were positioned at the time, suggesting they were the target,” and that residents in Izium said that rocket attacks, “happened frequently during the Russian occupation.”

The report cited 11 civilian mine-casualties, and noted that HRW had seen “physical evidence of PFM antipersonnel mine use,” including, “unexploded mines, remnants of mines, and the metal cassettes that carry the mines in rockets.”

It has to be noted that HRW has been banned in Russia since April 2022, making it impossible for the organization to gather evidence on the ground in areas controlled by Russian forces. However, lack of access to evidence has not stopped it from using its report to carry accusations against Russia, citing Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Irina Venediktova’s claim that “Russian forces used PFM mines in the Kharkivska region as early as February 26”. In contrast, the numerous credible reports of Kiev’s use of petal mines in Donetsk, available through open sources, are absent from the report.

HRW’s history of targeted condemnations

Human Rights Watch is one of many Western-funded NGOs with a history of whitewashing NATO and its allies’ crimes while pretending to be a neutral observer. Over the years, I’ve pointed out the hypocrisy of Ken Roth, who was the George Soros-funded NGO’s executive director from 1993-2022. In March 2021 he pushed Washington’s propaganda about Russia starving Syria. More glaringly, in 2015, Roth used footage from an eastern Gaza neighbourhood (Shuja’iyya) that had been flattened by Israel, to claim the footage depicted Syria’s Aleppo. He went on to likewise push the 2013 Ghouta “chemical” narrative, which had long been widely-discredited by journalists and by the so-called “rebels” themselves.

If dubious claims from HRW or its representatives aren’t indication enough of their allegiances to Western narratives, then their links to the US government should be. The vice chair of its board of directors, Susan Manilow, according to this 2014 article, describes herself as “a longtime friend to Bill Clinton,” who helped manage his campaign finances. Bruce Rabb, also on the board, lists in his biography that he “served as staff assistant to President Richard Nixon” from 1969-70 – the period in which his administration secretly and illegally carpet-bombed Cambodia and Laos.

The article further notes that the advisory committee for HRW’s Americas Division has even boasted the presence of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Miguel Díaz. According to his State Department biography, Díaz served as a CIA analyst and also provided “oversight of US intelligence activities in Latin America” for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

So, when HRW recently decided to finally discuss Ukraine’s deployment of the insidious petal mines (tens of thousands of which have been fired into the Donbass by Ukraine over the course of the past year), it is not because the body has suddenly become neutral and impartial, but it is rather a grasp at credibility: reporting what is widely known – that, in violation of international law, Ukraine has been deploying Petal mines – but avoid providing the whole story.

By downplaying and ignoring Kiev’s widespread use of petal mines throughout the DPR, HRW is deliberately downplaying war crimes, much like the entirety of Western corporate media.

Kiev’s Western supporters may even have to deal with its use of the petal mines at their own expense down the line – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently announced his country would invest $2.2 million into de-mining Ukraine. Of course, no mention was made of the Ottawa Treaty-banned munitions which will have to be cleared.

Kiev’s deadly delivery 

In one incident I witnessed first hand, an attack took place just after 9 pm on July 30, 2022. Ukraine fired rockets, each packed with over 300 mines, onto Donetsk, its suburbs, and other cities, including Yasinovataya, Makeevka and Gorlovka. The rockets exploded in the air to ensure greater distribution of devices on the ground. The attack mirrored previous ‘deliveries’ to the hard-hit Donetsk districts of Kievskiy, Kirovsky and Kuibyshevkiy.

The morning after, I walked the central Donetsk streets extremely carefully, wary of every leaf or piece of cardboard which could be obscuring or covering a Petal mine, so difficult are they to pick out from their surroundings. They cannot seriously damage military vehicles, which means that scattering them over Donetsk only has one purpose – to target and maim civilians. Some models of the petal mines have a self-destruct timer. Others, including those used by Kiev, can stay on the ground for years.

The innocent victims of Donbass

Since reporting the initial bombardment in late July, I have been following up on the methodical destruction of these mines by Russian sappers, as well as on civilians harmed by the illegal munitions. One of the more recent victims was 14 year old Nikita. His foot was blown off when in early November, 2022, he stepped on a mine in a playground while on his way to visit his grandmother.

RT journalist Roman Kosarev recently spoke with another recent teenage victim,  who stepped on a petal mine when getting into a car.

Kosarev also spoke to the Director of the Donetsk Republic’s Trauma Center, Andrey Boryak, who said: “The injury from such a mine is very severe, and immediately leads to a handicap. It’s almost impossible to save the foot and the lower part of the leg.”

HRW has had over 6 months to investigate Ukraine littering the DPR with Petal/PFM-1 mines… but it has not, and will not. It’s once again the case that the lives of Donbass civilians don’t matter when it comes not only to Western media reporting but also to supposedly-neutral human rights bodies. Even worse still is the knowledge that in spite of the valiant efforts of sappers in the DPR, the mines will inevitably claim more innocent civilians as their victims.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

March 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

US and Taiwan plan to equip Kiev regime forces with ‘swarms-of-swarms’ drones

By Drago Bosnic | March 28, 2023

There’s very little doubt that warfare has changed dramatically in recent decades, with the tactical gap between leading militaries and those of local powers (or even the usually overlooked small countries) narrowing as the proliferation of unmanned systems continues unabated. With the advent of the information era, the abundance of war footage has essentially eliminated the once-assured readiness of tens of millions to go to war, leaving militaries around the globe struggling to meet their recruitment quotas. Losing even a hundred drones is certainly preferable to having ten soldiers (or even one) killed and/or wounded in action, particularly for politicians and their respective parties seeking reelection. As a result, drones, robots and other unmanned vehicles have become increasingly important.

The combination of these factors created the “perfect storm” for the dramatic rise and adoption of unmanned systems by most militaries around the world. Perhaps the best proof of this has been the mass usage of drones by both sides of the Ukrainian conflict. Ranging from commercial quadcopters to HALE (high-altitude, long-endurance) military drones, these weapons are changing the face of warfare in a manner no less revolutionary than airplanes and tanks did during the First World War. Interestingly, as both the Russian military and the Kiev regime forces deploy advanced long-range air defenses (particularly the former), the role of larger drones has subsided, leaving smaller platforms as the more cost-effective alternative, while also providing significant tactical advantages.

Aside from circumventing advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, miniature drones offer an important upper hand in terms of first-strike capabilities and forward reconnaissance. Apart from Russia and the Kiev regime, the US-led political West is also taking this into account, especially when considering the fact that NATO’s massive ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities have been used to observe virtually every inch of the vast Ukrainian battlefields. Precisely this is pushing the belligerent alliance to equip the Neo-Nazi junta forces with the latest unmanned technologies, both as a way of providing its favorite puppet regime with weapons to counter the Russian military, as well as battle-testing the said drones against an advanced state adversary.

And while the Kiev regime’s pompous announcements of an upcoming offensive may be dismissed as routine propaganda stunts, Russian intelligence found solid evidence that such weapons are being supplied to the Neo-Nazi junta. Needless to say, the political West sending advanced weapons to Kiev is hardly breaking news, but what’s unusual is the participation of Taiwan. Apparently, China’s breakaway island province is working directly with the US on developing and manufacturing the new unmanned systems. Another novelty in this particular case is the ostensible ability of these drones to autonomously coordinate their attacks and act as a swarm, or more precisely, “swarms-of-swarms”, as the program’s name clearly indicates.

The project, named AMASS (Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms), is directly supervised by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Pentagon’s top advanced weapons programs agency. In order to accomplish the task of controlling hundreds of drones simultaneously, the use of advanced artificial intelligence (AAI) is a given in this case. Considering that AAI is one of DARPA’s main fields of study, its involvement in the project is effectively guaranteed. Military experts estimate that several hundred kamikaze drones can function within one network, further connected to a much larger system that includes thousands of drones. DARPA’s share in the project is by far the largest, although Taiwan seems to be providing key manufacturing facilities.

Back in early February, several media reports emerged that the AMASS project was fast-tracked by DARPA due to Pentagon’s plans to create a “swarms-of-swarms” system that would “simultaneously counter multiple adversarial assets and enable warfighters to operate within the A2/AD [anti-access/area denial] environment”. With Russia and China being the only countries with such capabilities, it’s essentially guaranteed they are the primary targets. This is further reinforced by the involvement of the government in Taipei, which clearly aims to counter China’s A2/AD “bubbles”. These still represent an insurmountable obstacle against which the Taiwanese military is effectively powerless, both in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities.

However, before the possible deployment of AMASS in Taiwan, the system needs to be battle-tested in Ukraine. If it were to be proven effective, Washington DC and Taipei would certainly mass-produce it. Thus, it’s extremely likely that the project was discussed by Russian and Chinese military delegates during President Xi Jinping’s latest visit to Moscow, as it’s in the interest of both to see the program fail. Otherwise, if it proves successful in Ukraine, the Chinese military itself would most certainly face it in Taiwan, endangering the success of a possible amphibious operation in case of a US-orchestrated escalation. And while China has advanced systems capable of countering such weapons (including its own drone swarms), the best possible defense is preventing their deployment altogether.

Nevertheless, with the Russian military poised to be the first to encounter weapons such as the AMASS, Moscow has already started crucial upgrades to its air defense systems. Still, Russia’s A2/AD, better known as “echeloned defense” in Russian military nomenclature, is only one segment of its (recently revised) strategy, with the so-called “active defense” being the key to neutralizing immediate threats. This includes adopting new offensive capabilities and precisely this could have been one of the main topics of behind-closed-doors talks about Sino-Russian technological cooperation, which almost certainly includes the exchange of information on drone swarms.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

March 28, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US politicians urge Biden to send cluster bombs to Kiev

By Lucas Leiroz | March 28, 2023

Once again, American politicians are pushing for new escalations in the Ukrainian conflict. Now, lawmakers want the Biden regime to supply cluster munitions to the Ukrainian armed forces. This type of measure would be seen as a serious provocation by Russia and would certainly have strong impacts on the battlefield and in the current diplomatic crisis.

Recently, some Republican senators formally asked the government to “not hesitate” to send cluster arms to Ukraine. James Risch and Roger Wickers, both from Mississippi, led the Congress campaign, and were also supported by Michael McCaul, from Texas, and Mike Rogers, from Alabama. According to them, Washington should ship such bombs as quickly as possible to Kiev, ignoring what they think to be “vague concerns about the reaction of allies and partners and unfounded fears of ‘escalation'”.

The pressure comes amid a context of “despair” on the part of the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev and the more pro-war groups of American domestic politics. Faced with the Ukrainian military failure and the imminent Russian victory, despite the systematic sending of weapons by NATO, the only solution seems to be to resort to the use of “non-conventional” arms. In this sense, the use of cluster bombs would be one of the “alternatives”, which is why Ukrainian politicians have asked US congressmen to increase the pressure for the government to allow the export of such equipment.

Cluster bombs are banned in at least 110 countries by a 2008 UN-brokered treaty. These arms are notorious for their fragmentation power. Cluster munitions include countless small projectiles inside. When launched, these bombs explode ejecting projectiles that injure a much greater number of victims than conventional weapons. The most dangerous thing is that many of these small projectiles do not detonate immediately after being ejected, and can remain inactive for a long time, which is why civilians can be mutilated or killed by bomblets that explode long after a conflict ends.

In addition to the absolutely anti-humanitarian aspect of these arms, it is necessary to emphasize that American law prohibits their export in any situation. For the US government to authorize the shipment of cluster munitions to Ukraine, it would be necessary to change national legislation – or simply act illegally. Also, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had already made it clear that there was no possibility of sending these arms to Kiev, stating that “according to our own policy, we have concerns about the use of those kinds of munitions”.

However, for warmongers, no limits should be respected. Failing to convince the US government directly, the Ukrainians appealed to parliamentarians, who then used their power of political mobilization to form pro-war coalitions and encourage the violation of the country’s laws. Parliamentary pressure is one of the most frequently used mechanisms by Western powers to promote institutional changes in other countries. Now, the US government itself is under pressure from Congress, which echoes the interests of pro-war elites.

On the part of Ukrainians, there is no interest in respecting any humanitarian limits. There are already several reports stating that the Ukrainian armed forces used Soviet-era cluster weapons in civilian residential areas in Donbass since 2014. In March last year, for example, a Tochka-U missile containing cluster munitions killed more than 20 people and injured dozens of civilians in Donetsk. Faced with the collapse of the Ukrainian arsenals, what interests the neo-Nazi regime now is to obtain cluster arms from American stockpiles.

It is important to emphasize that the pressure in Washington comes in parallel with the British decision to send depleted uranium radioactive weapons to Kiev. This reinforces that Western pro-war elites are interested in raising the level of aid to Kiev, openly promoting the shipment of illegal weapons banned by international treaties. The practical result of this will obviously be an unprecedented escalation.

Commenting on the case at a recent press conference, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Ryabkov, said that American lawmakers do not seem aware of the tragic consequences that sending such armaments would generate. According to him, the very security of NATO countries would be threatened if such a measure were taken – since international tensions would escalate to a point of no return. Ryabkov also warned that this would block any possibility of normalization of relations between Moscow and Washington.

Obviously, Moscow will not remain inert while citizens in the special military operation zone are exposed to attacks with illegal weapons with high destructive power. In order to defend the inhabitants of territories reintegrated into the Russian Federation, extraordinary military measures will certainly be taken, which will have high impacts on the battlefield.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

March 28, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Will Pakistan Support A US Mercenary’s Plot To Recruit Afghan Refugees As Fighters For Kiev?

By Andrew Korybko | March 26, 2023

The New York Times’ (NYT) damning report about “Stolen Valor: The U.S. Volunteers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bicker” contained an intriguing detail that most readers might have missed regarding a US mercenary’s plot to recruit Pakistani-based Afghan refugees as fighters for Kiev. Former construction worker-turned-mercenary Ryan Routh brazenly told them about his plan to purchase passports from that country in order to facilitate this. Here’s the relevant excerpt from their report:

“With Legion growth stalling, Ryan Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, N.C., is seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. Mr. Routh, who spent several months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move them, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed interest. ‘We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,’ he said in an interview from Washington.”

The reason why he’s resorting to illegal means for getting those refugees to Kiev is because that former Soviet Republic’s authorities have thus far refused to grant visas to any Afghan fighters. Routh said in a separate interview earlier this month that “Most of the Ukrainian authorities do not want these soldiers. I have had partners meeting with [Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense] every week and still have not been able to get them to agree to issue one single visa.”

Pakistan is already suspected of indirectly arming Kiev against Russia at the behest of its American overlord so the precedent is established for suspecting that it could support Routh’s plot. The fascist post-modern coup regime might therefore very well end up doing this despite Ukraine literally being against it if their shared US patron signals its approval, which is why it’s incumbent on Islamabad to issue a statement in response to the NYT’s latest report so as to urgently clarify this scandalous matter.

Remaining silent after one of the world’s leading Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets informed millions of people about this plan comes off as extremely suspicious. While it’s possible that Pakistan can still end up supporting Routh’s proposal even if it publicly denies any interest in doing so, its leadership should at least understand the soft power importance of reacting to this. The very fact that they haven’t suggests that they’re either not monitoring the media or could care less what the rest of the world thinks.

Either way, Pakistan’s silence is worthy of suspicion. Russia should consider raising the issue, whether directly via its diplomats or indirectly through the media, in order to prompt its non-traditional partner to say something about this scenario. If Islamabad goes along with Routh’s plot to let him purchase passports for those Afghan refugees who are interested in fighting for Kiev as mercenaries, then it would represent the latest instance of Pakistan’s “mission creep” in the NATO-Russian proxy war.

March 26, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Putin: West’s Weapons Supply to Ukraine Won’t Be Enough to Outgun Russia

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 25.03.2023

The United States and its European allies have sent tens of billions of dollars-worth of military equipment to Kiev to fuel a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Moscow has warned repeatedly about the consequences of these actions for regional and global security.

Western countries won’t be able to deliver enough weapons in Ukraine to outgun Russia, President Vladimir Putin has assured.

“Threats exist, of course. When weapons are supplied to a country we are in conflict with, this is always a threat. As for how they can be assessed, of course we know about the plans to supply them,” Putin said in an interview with Russian TV on Saturday, responding to a question about whether Moscow considers Western arms deliveries to Kiev a “threat” to national security.

“We see, hear about and know about these delivery plans. You mentioned one million shells, about the delivery of tanks. One million – is it a lot or a little? This is a significant amount. First of all, the leading NATO countries, let’s say the United States of America, according to our information, produce about 14,000-15,000 shells per month… Ukraine’s Armed Forces, according to our military’s estimates, use up to 5,000 shells per day of hostilities,” Putin said.

Russia is aware of NATO’s plans to ramp up shell production to 42,000 per month by this year, and to 750,000 per year by 2025, Putin said. “We don’t know yet what will happen in 2025, but right now, this year, 14,000-15,000 shells are being produced, despite the fact that Ukraine’s military is spending up to 5,000 per day,” he noted.

“We are concerned about [weapons deliveries] from the perspective that this is an attempt to prolong the conflict,” Putin said, noting that “from the point of view of the logic of those who provoked this conflict and are trying to preserve it at any cost, [the supply of weapons] is probably the right decision. But in my opinion, this will only lead to a greater tragedy,” he said.

Emphasizing that Russia will not allow for the “excessive militarization” of its economy, Putin said that to date, Moscow hasn’t reduced civilian construction, health care, education and infrastructure development, but the West will be forced to do so.

“The [NATO] ‘arsonists’ plan to send between 420 and 440 tanks to Ukraine. Here it is the same thing as with ammunition. During this period, we will produce and modernize over 1,600 tanks, Putin said. “The total number of tanks of the Russian Army will be three times greater than the number of tanks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Even more than three times,” he added.

Depleted Uranium Weapons

Putin disagreed with claims being made by Western officials and media that the depleted uranium weapons being sent to Kiev won’t result in any health or other consequences.

“This, of course, is not the case. The fact is that they do not belong to the category of weapons of mass destruction. That’s true. But the core of the projectile with depleted uranium (different materials can be used, it is used for armor-piercing purposes) still generates so-called radiation dust, and in this sense it of course amounts to a weapon of the most dangerous kind,” he said.

Russia has the means to respond, Putin warned. “Without exaggeration, we have hundreds of thousands, namely hundreds of thousands of such rounds. We haven’t used them yet,” he said.

The Russian president didn’t rule out that the UK’s announcement of DU munitions deliveries to Kiev were “deliberate” and designed specifically to try to disrupt this week’s talks between himself and Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss Beijing’s 12 point Ukraine peace plan.

“On the same day that President Xi Jinping told me about the positive aspects of the Chinese plan to resolve the Ukrainian [crisis] by peaceful means, we learned about the supply of millions of shells to Ukraine from the Western countries which served as the instigators of the conflict. The next day, right before our meeting with the press, we learned about this story that the UK is planning to send depleted uranium shells,” Putin said. “It’s as if the West did this on purpose to somehow disrupt our negotiations or influence them somehow.”

The UK’s announcement of plans to send DU munitions to Kiev this week have sparked fears that wide swathes of Ukraine could become another depleted uranium-contaminated wasteland similar to parts of the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, where cancers and other illnesses have shot up dramatically in the aftermath of US and British DU use in the 1990s and 2000s. The Russian military’s chief of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops warned Friday that the use of such arms would “cause irreparable harm to the health of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the civilian population.”

Tactical Nukes in Belarus

Putin also commented on matters of strategic security, saying Moscow and Minsk had agreed in principle that, without violating its obligations under the New START Treaty, Russia will be able to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

“We agreed that – in this sense, [Belarusian President] Alexander Grigorievich [Lukashenko] is right when he says ‘listen, we are your closest allies. Why do the Americans place nukes on their allies’ territory?’ They also engage, by the way, in the training of their pilots to use these weapons if necessary. We have agreed that if necessary, we will do the same thing, without violating our obligations – I would like to emphasize – without violating our international obligations on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons,” Putin said.

“The United States has been doing this for decades. They have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of allied countries, NATO countries, in Europe. In six states, if memory serves: Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Greece. There are no nukes in Greece right now, but there is a storage facility,” Putin said.

Nord Stream Terrorism

Asked to comment on the investigations surrounding last year’s sabotage attacks against Russia’s Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, Putin expressed his “full agreement” with the sentiment that the blasts were the handiwork of US intelligence.

“An American journalist who has become quite famous in the world now, conducted… an investigation and came to the conclusion, as you know, that this explosion of the gas pipelines was organized by the special services of the United States. I absolutely agree with such conclusions,” Putin said, referring to the investigative work conducted by Seymour Hersh.

March 25, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky Admitted That Ukraine Already Ran Out Of Ammo

By Andrew Korybko | March 25, 2023

The US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) began reporting more accurately on the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine since the start of the year, but the true test of their comparatively improved integrity will be whether they raise awareness about Zelensky’s latest damning admission. In an interview with Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, he candidly told his interlocutors that “We do not have ammunition. For us the situation in the East is not good.”

This is a major revelation for several reasons. First, it proves that Russia is winning NATO’s self-declared “race of logistics” in the sense that its armed forces still have ammo to continue fighting while the West’s Ukrainian proxies already ran out of that which their patrons provided over the past year. Second, the aforesaid aid that was already extended to this crumbling former Soviet Republic exceeds $100 billion, which makes Russia’s leading position in this “race of logistics” all the more impressive.

Third, Zelensky’s admission adds credence to what the Washington Post recently reported regarding how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring in this conflict, especially its “severe ammunition shortages” that one of its sources spoke about. Fourth, the preceding points drastically decrease the chances that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will achieve much of anything and actually make it increasingly likely that such a move would be an epic mistake that could ultimately lead to a decisive Russian breakthrough.

And finally, it can therefore be expected that Zelensky and his agents of influence across the West will beg for even more aid, arguing that the failure to pay up would risk making their prior investments in this proxy war all for naught if Kiev ends up losing to Russia. The problem, however, is that no amount of money can make ammunition appear out of thin air since it requires a lot of time to scale production accordingly to meet these newfound exorbitant needs.

The very fact that Ukraine is out of ammunition proves that the West’s defeat in its self-declared “race of logistics” with Russia might already be a fait accompli by this point since it’s clear that Kiev can’t keep pace with its opponent despite being backed by all of NATO’s military-industrial capacity. Zelensky almost certainly didn’t realize that his candid admission essentially amounted to this, but it’s presently unclear whether the MSM will inform their audience about this or not.

On the one hand, doing so could contribute to his forthcoming begging campaign, but it could also backfire if taxpayers start asking whether it’s worth ponying up even more money if Ukraine already ran out of ammo despite the over $100 billion in aid that it’s received thus far. After all, if that astronomical sum wasn’t enough to keep their guns firing, then there’s no telling how much will be needed for Kiev to reconquer more of its lost territory like it intends to do.

Not only that, but as was earlier explained, no amount of money can make ammunition appear out of thin air. Quite clearly, fundamental changes in the Ukrainian Armed Forces are needed in order to indefinitely perpetuate this conflict like the US is plotting to do, but its fighters can’t immediately transition to using exclusively Western equipment when they’re used to operating Soviet-era wares. This poses a dilemma since Russia keeps moving further ahead in this “race of logistics” as each day goes by.

Objectively speaking, the military-strategic dynamics are trending in the Kremlin’s favor, which would ordinarily compel Kiev to seriously consider China’s peace plan if it wasn’t for its American overlords preventing it from doing so. The longer that Zelensky remains resistant to the very thought of a ceasefire, the greater the chances are that Russia will transform its growing advantage in its “race of logistics” with NATO into a decisive victory that could result in Ukraine losing even more territory.

March 25, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Hungary comments on Ukraine’s NATO and EU bids

RT | March 25, 2023

Hungary will not agree to Ukraine joining NATO and the EU as long as Kiev continues to discriminate against ethnic Hungarians living in Transcarpathia, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.

Szijjarto added that he raised the issue at a meeting with the UN assistant secretary general for human rights, Ilze Brands Kehris.

Up to 99 Hungarian primary and secondary schools are in danger of being closed in Ukraine due to the nation’s education law, Szijjarto said. “I made it clear to Ilze Brands Kehris… that Hungary will not be able to support Ukraine’s transatlantic and European integration [bids] under any circumstances as long as Hungarian schools in the Transcarpathia region are in danger,” the minister wrote on Facebook on Friday.

Kiev has been cracking down on minority language rights for years. Laws enforcing the use of Ukrainian in education and television were adopted as early as 2017 under then-President Pyotr Poroshenko. In 2018, another law banned the teaching of Russian, as well as Romanian, Polish, and Hungarian beyond the primary school level.

In 2019, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission criticized Ukraine’s State Language Law, saying it “fails to strike balance between strengthening Ukrainian and safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights.”

Budapest has been among the most vocal critics of Kiev’s language policies in the West. According to Szijjarto, Ukraine has not done anything substantial to address Hungary’s concerns.

“For the past eight years, we have continuously received promises from the Ukrainian authorities that they will solve this problem, but they have not actually done anything,” he said.

Around 156,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Ukraine, most of them in the western region of Transcarpathia. Ukraine is also home to around 150,000 ethnic Romanians and more than 250,000 Moldovans, and Bucharest previously joined Budapest in demanding that the language laws be revised.

In February, Szijjarto announced that the Council of Europe will review Kiev’s treatment of minorities and issue a report on its alleged discrimination against ethnic Hungarians and Romanians living in Ukraine this summer. He pointed to yet another law adopted in December 2022, which mandated the use of Ukrainian in most aspects of daily and public life, including schools.

March 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , | Leave a comment

Uranium Shells to Cause Irreversible Harm to Health of Ukrainians, Russian MoD Says

Sputnik – 24.03.2023

MOSCOW – The use of uranium ammunition will cause irreversible harm to the health of the military and civilian population of Ukraine, but NATO is ready to supply them to Kiev, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, said on Friday.

“Despite the fact that the use of such ammunition [with depleted uranium] will cause irreparable harm to the health of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the civilian population, NATO countries, in particular the UK, express their readiness to supply this type of weapon to the Kiev regime,” Kirillov told a briefing.

Depleted uranium compounds, remaining in the soil after its use as part of projectiles, may be dangerous for people, animals and the environment for a long time, the official added.

After the use of shells with depleted uranium on the territory of Ukraine, significant cultivation areas will be contaminated — through vehicles, radioactive substances will be carried to the territory outside the combat zone, he said.

Lt. Gen. added that use of depleted uranium shells can provoke serious diseases, and the ingestion of dust into the body is a radiation hazard.

“As a result of the impact of a depleted uranium munition, a mobile hot cloud of a finely dispersed aerosol of uranium-238 and its oxides is formed, which, when exposed to the body in the future, can provoke the development of serious diseases,” Kirillov said.

The main radiation hazard from depleted uranium occurs if it enters the body in the form of dust, the official added.

“The flux of alpha-radiation from small uranium particles deposited in the upper and lower respiratory tract, lungs and esophagus cause the development of malignant tumors. Uranium dust accumulating in the kidneys, bone tissue and liver leads to changes in internal organs,” Lt. Gen. explained.

NATO fired about 40,000 shells with more than 15 tons of depleted uranium during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, Kirillov recalled.

“It is necessary to recall that depleted uranium aircraft munitions were used by NATO forces during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. In total, about 40,000 armor-piercing air shells with a total amount of depleted uranium of more than 15 tons were used on the territory of this country,” Kirillov told reporters.

The level of uranium contamination of soil and groundwater in Serbia still requires constant monitoring to assess potential risks, the official added.

NATO soldiers have become victims of the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Iraq and Yugoslavia, he stressed.

“The victims of the irresponsible policy of their own leadership were NATO servicemen who took part in military campaigns in Iraq and Yugoslavia,” Kirillov told a briefing.

According to a 2016 report by the Chief Military Medical Inspector of Italy, it is reported that more than 4,000 servicemen of the national armed forces had malignant tumors of various types. These soldiers were deployed in the Balkans in 1994-1999 and in Iraq in 2003 in areas where the alliance forces used depleted uranium ammunition. At the same time, 330 people — 8% of cases — died as a result of the disease, official concluded.

Meanwhile, Kirillov stressed the fact that depleted uranium shells do not have significant advantage over tungsten shells in conditions of modern military operations.
“The use of ammunition containing depleted uranium has no significant advantage over tungsten in the conditions of modern military operations,” he told.

The term depleted uranium is a trivial name for a metal based on over 90% of the isotopes of uranium-238 and less than 1% of uranium-235, the official said.

“The use of depleted uranium in such ammunition is associated with its high density, which ensures a high armor-piercing effect. This effect is achieved by using the kinetic energy of the core itself, as well as its shell. Upon impact with the armor, the shell made of soft steel is destroyed and transfers its energy to the core, which penetrates into the armor,” Kirillov explained.

According to the military, tungsten alloys have similar characteristics, but ammunition based on them is much more expensive to manufacture. Therefore, depleted uranium ammunition is much more often used in those countries where there are uranium reserves, its processing technology, and their use is planned on foreign territory when there is no need to think about environmental consequences.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Romania to consider bill seeking land grab in Ukraine

RT | March 24, 2023

A controversial bill submitted to the Romanian parliament this week has urged the government to drop its recognition of Ukraine’s borders by 2027 and “annex” territories where ethnic Romanians live.

The bill, introduced by right-wing lawmaker Diana Sosoaca, would repeal a provision in the 1997 treaty with Ukraine, which pledged respect for each other’s national borders. She described the document as “the biggest act of treason” in Romania’s modern history because it “recognized the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact,” according to a formal justification of the bill.

Sosoaca was referring to the non-aggression agreement between the USSR and Nazi Germany, sealed in August 1939, which included a classified portion delineating spheres of influence for Moscow and Berlin.

The pact was one of several such agreements signed by European nations with Adolf Hitler’s government, as they maneuvered diplomatically in the last days of the interwar period. Romania was a Nazi ally for a significant portion of World War II, before switching sides. It lost some of its territories in the post-war settlement, which were added to Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Moldova.

Sosoaca listed several lands, which she deems as historically Romanian and currently “abusively held by Ukraine,” from Northern Bukovina to Snake Island. The latter was part of a lengthy legal battle over maritime borders, which ended in 2009 with Kiev keeping sovereignty over the islet.

Romania would “annex” those territories under the bill. The legislator cited a need to protect ethnic Romanians living in Ukraine from Kiev’s discriminatory policies, and ensure that they can maintain their cultural identity.

After the bill was met with pushback in Romania, Sosoaca stressed that she did not want Bucharest to go to war with Kiev for a land grab. However, she added: “peace cannot be based on the forced ethnic assimilation of the Romanian minority, which is the practice of the Ukrainian state.”

The initiative was introduced in the upper chamber of the Romanian parliament on Monday, with Sosoaca’s SOS Party holding a presentation the next day. She used to be a member of a different political force, but was expelled from its parliamentary faction in 2021 for allegedly breaking with its political strategy, and is now technically independent.

Critics have described Sosoaca as “far right” and claimed that she has ties with Russia, based on her attempts to soften a diplomatic dispute a few years ago, and her calls for a neutral stance on the Ukrainian conflict. The Romanian government is a staunch supporter of Kiev.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

China gives US advice on Ukraine

RT | March 22, 2023

The US should stop “fanning the flames” of the conflict in Ukraine instead of making accusations against Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin has said.

During a briefing on Wednesday, Wang responded to a statement by US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who said the previous day that he didn’t think “you can reasonably look at China as impartial in any way” when it comes to the fighting between Moscow and Kiev.

Beijing has failed to condemn Russia’s military operation, while continuing to buy energy from the country, he stated. Chinese President Xi Jinping “saw fit to fly all the way to Moscow” this week, but has never even talked on the phone to his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky, Kirby added.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman rejected Kirby’s claims, stating that the US was itself too deeply involved in the conflict in Ukraine to accuse Beijing of being biased.

“The US side claims that China’s stance isn’t impartial. But is it impartial to continuously supply weapons to the battlefield? Is it impartial to constantly escalate the conflict? Is it impartial to allow the effects of the crisis to spill over globally?” Wang said, referring to the Biden administration’s policies.

“We advise the American side to rethink its own stance on the Ukraine issue, turn away from the erroneous path of adding fuel to the fire, and stop shifting the blame to China,” he said.

Beijing has “no selfish motives on the Ukraine issue, has not stood idly by… or sought profit for itself,” the spokesman insisted. “What China has done boils down to one thing, that is, to promote peace talks.”

As for Xi’s trip to the Russian capital, which took place between Monday and Wednesday, Wang pointed out that this was “a journey of friendship, cooperation and peace, which has aroused positive responses in the international community.”

The Ukrainian crisis was among the top issues discussed between Vladimir Putin and Xi in Moscow, with the Russian president stressing that many provisions of the Chinese peace proposal were “consonant with the Russian stance and can be taken as a foundation for a peaceful settlement when they are ready for it in the West and in Kiev.” However, Putin pointed out that Moscow currently didn’t detect readiness from either the US, its allies or the Ukrainian government.

March 22, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Send in the Clowns

Yellen and Garland perform back-to-back surprise visits to Ukraine

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MARCH 21, 2023

Sometimes I think that the script being used by the Biden Administration to manage its foreign and national security policies has been written by George Orwell, though I am not sure if it based on 1984 or Animal Farm. Maybe it is a combination of the two. Either way, it would help explain why there is something seriously wrong here. For example, at the end of February Congress, confronted by a debt ceiling, began discussing cutting Medicare and Social Security while more recently a banking sector crisis seems to be developing so Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen decided to go off doing photo-ops in Kiev embracing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after handing him the keys to the US economy. She explained to Zelensky how the White House had approved an additional $12 billion in aid to Ukraine during the previous week, including $2 billion for the military and $10 billion to support Zelensky’s government and other infrastructure needs. The US Treasury is now de facto the source of the Ukraine government’s entire annual budget. In addition, Yellen described glowingly how the Treasury and State Departments will implement a new round of sanctions against more than 200 entities and individuals with ties to Russia’s military, high-technology industries, and its metals and mining sectors. The US Department of Commerce is also enforcing export restrictions on materials and technology, including semiconductors, sold by American companies to customers in Russia and China.

In defense of her grand mission, Yellen penned an op-ed for the always compliant New York Times explaining the importance of Ukraine to the United States. She wrote how in Ukraine “… Russia’s barbaric attacks continue — but Kyiv stands strong and free. Ukraine’s heroic resistance is the direct product of the courage and resilience of Ukraine’s military, leadership and people. But President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians would be the first to admit that they can’t do this alone — and that international support is crucial to sustaining their resistance. I’m in Kyiv to reaffirm our unwavering support of the Ukrainian people. Mr. Putin is counting on our global coalition’s resolve to wane, which he thinks will give him the upper hand in the war. But he is wrong. As President Biden said here last week, America will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes… Ukrainians are fighting for their lives on the front lines of the free world. Today, and every day, they deserve America’s unyielding support.”

The Yellen op-ed drones on with a lie so large that it is astonishing that the New York Times would even print it: “When confronted with scenes of brutality and oppression, Americans have always been quick to stand up and do the right thing. Our strength as a nation comes from our commitment to our ideals — and our capacity to see in others the same desires that animated our own struggles for freedom and justice.” But then she tops that with assurances from “President Zelensky, [who] has pledged to use these funds in the ‘most responsible way.’ We welcome this commitment, as well as his longstanding agenda to strengthen good governance in Ukraine.” Huh?

And here is Yellen’s version of “Why We Fight!”: “Our support is motivated, first and foremost, by a moral duty to come to the aid of a people under attack. We also know that, as President Zelensky has said, our assistance is not charity. It’s an investment in ‘global security and democracy.’ Let’s look at the strategic impact of our support for Ukraine so far. Mr. Putin’s war poses a direct threat to European security, as well as to the laws and values that underpin the rules-based international system.”

So, Americans have a “moral duty” apparently up to and including sending their sons and daughters to die supporting Ukraine. And ah yes, it’s all about the “free” world, democracy and the notorious rules based international system! Has anyone yet cited Hegel’s observation that the President Joe Biden Administration’s foreign policy has already “repeated itself, first as a tragedy in Afghanistan, second as a farce”? Meanwhile one suspects Zelensky was laughing all the way to the bank as Yellen disappeared over the horizon to come up with the cash, as that old expression goes, and he probably already has one of his buddies shopping for a new villa on the French Riviera to supplement his other real estate! But wait! The story became even more exciting the following week, involving another visit to Mr. Z by America’s nearly invisible Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who can literally look Z in the eye as they are both very short. Garland is generally engaged in chasing white supremacists and requiring all new FBI hires to learn all about how to identify and pursue antisemites, but he has made two trips to Kiev to meet mano-a-mano with the brave olive drab t-shirt clad warrior who is already being beatified as the twenty-first century’s Winston Churchill.

Garland was in town to do the other thing that engages his sense of law and order, which is to set up a tribunal to arrest, prosecute and punish Russian war criminals after Ukraine emerges triumphant from its conflict with the unimaginably evil President Vladimir Putin. It would be modeled on the Nuremberg Tribunals that tried leading Nazis after the Second World War, and Garland has cited his family’s escape from the so-called holocaust to explain why he is intent on personally being involved in delivering what he describes as “justice.” A Justice Department spokeswoman described Garland’s mission as being in Kiev to personally “reaffirm America’s commitment to help hold Russia responsible for war crimes committed in its unjust and unprovoked invasion against its sovereign neighbor.”

Garland had several meetings with President Volodymyr Zelensky and foreign law enforcement officials including Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin while attending what was billed as the “United for Justice Conference.” Zelensky elaborated that the purpose of the conference was to hold Russia’s leadership accountable for the alleged atrocities carried out by its army. “The main issue of all these meetings is accountability,” he said. The US Justice Department is reportedly actively engaged in the gathering of evidence to indict the Russians. During Garland’s first visit to Ukraine in June 2022 he announced the appointment of Eli Rosenbaum, an Office of Special Investigations prosecutor best known for going after former Nazis, to direct American efforts to identify and track Russian war criminals.

Garland laid it on thick, as was expected from someone responsible for prosecuting the rest of the world when it steps out of line. He told his hosts that “Just over twelve months ago, invading Russian forces began committing atrocities at the largest scale in any armed conflict since the Second World War. We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly, and with one voice: the perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them. In addition to our work in partnership with Ukraine and the international community, the United States has also opened criminal investigations into war crimes in Ukraine that may violate US law.” He concluded by throwing out the complete bullshit party line much beloved by Joe Biden and Tony Blinken, that “The United States recognizes that what happens here in Ukraine will have a direct impact on the strength of our own democracy.”

Of course, there is more than a little bit of irony in all this, not to mention top level hypocrisy, as the United States has killed more people directly or indirectly while committing more crimes against humanity dished out in various ways over the past twenty years than any other country, except, predictably, Israel, which currently is committing crimes against humanity on a nearly daily basis. Curiously, however, the normally tone-deaf White House and Pentagon seem to understand, on a certain level, that opening up Pandora’s box might not be a good idea when it comes to war crimes. Last week Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin refused to share US information on alleged Russian crimes with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the ICC collected by American intelligence agencies regarding Russian activities in Ukraine because helping the court investigate Russians might set a precedent that could help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans. Washington does not recognize the ICC, fearing that it might well seek to examine the sorry record of US military crimes in Asia and Africa. Israel similarly does to recognize the court for roughly the same reason.

So here we are, two top level officials from the Biden regime sneak into Kiev to give an arch crook money and unlimited moral support, together with a pledge that more cash is on the way as are arms and war crimes tribunals await those nasty Russians. And guess what? It is all packaged as being good for America! This sounds like a song that was sung previously in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and it was a tissue of lies then just as it is now. Yellen ought to have stayed home to tend to the banking system and should be giving the billions of dollars earmarked for Zelensky back to the American people. If Garland wants to investigate anyone it should be the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and Congress. And yes, his own FBI! And don’t forget how the Bidens and Clintons became multi-millionaires! And then there is the destruction of Nord Stream. Funny how every time one turns over a rock in and around the US government something really smelly surfaces.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

March 21, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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