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China warns of World War III with ‘nuclear sword hanging over our heads’ over Putin’s plan to send nukes to Belarus

China has called for superpowers to step back from the brink of nuclear war as Russia announces a plan to deploy tactical nukes.

news.com.au Alike Kraterou and Jack Evans 2 Apr 23

China has issued a warning of a possible World War III after Russia’s announcement to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Geng Shuang, China’s representative in the United Nations, called for all world powers to step back from the brink and maintain “global strategic stability”.

He urged nations to prevent nuclear proliferation and crisis, avoid armed attacks against nuclear power plants and the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Speaking at a Security Council meeting on international peace, Shuang made clear China’s opposition to Kremlin’s plan to send nuclear weapons to Minsk.

He described nuclear weapons as “the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads” and called on all nuclear weapon states to reduce the risk of a nuclear war and avoid any armed conflict between nuclear weapons states.

“We call for the abolition of the nuclear-sharing arrangements and advocate no deployment of nuclear weapons abroad by all nuclear weapons states, and the withdrawal of nuclear weapons deployed abroad,” Shuang said.

Shuang stressed that “nuclear proliferation must be prevented and nuclear crisis avoided.” He added that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought,” and that China’s position on nuclear weapons has been “clear and consistent”.

China has firmly committed to a defensive nuclear strategy, not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones, and to no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances.

While not directly mentioning Russia, Geng called for all parties to “stay rational, avoid aggravating tensions, and intensifying frictions, or fanning the flames”.

China has claimed to maintain a neutral stance in the war but has also pointed out its “no-limits friendship with Russia”.

Last month, China released a point peace plan to end the war, calling for a ceasefire and talks between Ukraine and Russia…………………………………………………….

more https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/china-warns-of-world-war-iii-with-nuclear-sword-hanging-over-our-heads-over-putins-plan-to-send-nukes-to-belarus/news-story/1f3882aa80a4407422fb76b9a4269b6f—

April 3, 2023 Posted by | China, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The cost of being wrong — Beyond Nuclear International

The price of nuclear deterrence failure is too great a gamble

The cost of being wrong — Beyond Nuclear International

Deterrence cannot fail and is therefore not a foundation for peace

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Arguments around nuclear deterrence can become quickly convoluted. But the basic premise, according to those who advocate it, is that we are safer with nuclear weapons than without them. The possession of nuclear weapons by the world’s major powers, they say, has kept the peace. The lethality of nuclear weapons is such that they will inevitably never be used, thus preventing nuclear war, the argument goes.

To the rational ear this sounds breathtakingly illogical. But try tangling with the deterrence crowd and both sides will quickly find themselves tied up in a semantic knot of double and triple negatives.

However, it’s all really quite simple, or it seems so when listening to Austrian diplomat Alexander Kmentt explain it. Kmentt, one of the chief architects of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), just has a knack for framing the argument against deterrence both clearly and compellingly. Here is how he puts it:

“I can’t prove that deterrence doesn’t work. And I can’t prove that it does. But the price of being wrong if it doesn’t work is too high. It cannot fail.”

Kmentt was addressing an audience of European representatives of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War at their January 2023 conference in Hamburg, Germany. (I was also a presenter there so enjoyed the privilege of hearing Kmentt’s talk, which was delivered live streamed.)

This rationale makes sense. For deterrence to work, it must be 100% foolproof all the time. But anything governed by human beings — and technology invented by them — can guarantee no such thing. And given the price of failure, the choice is obvious: deterrence isn’t worth the risk.

There is a solution to all this and it is contained in the TPNW, of which Kmentt, and many others, can be so rightfully proud. You can indeed guarantee zero chance of a nuclear war if there are zero nuclear weapons in the world. “With the TPNW, deterrence was rejected,” Kmentt said. A first. In another first, “it is the first treaty that recognizes the injustices done.”

Those injustices are invariably meted out to smaller nations, and it was they who lined up in significant enough numbers to both sign and then ratify the TPNW. “If deterrence fails, small states are the collateral damage,” Kmentt pointed out.

In fact, the TPNW is so innovatory — Kmentt referred to it as “an avant-garde treaty”— that it departed from all earlier treaty scripts by encouraging full inclusion and participation. Framing it was “open to outside voices, to civil society and to academia,” Kmentt told the Hamburg audience. “There were observers.” This set it apart from the halls-of-power treaties that preceded it.

And it remains an open process. “We are clear that we are welcoming to whoever wants to engage with us on arguments around the treaty,” said Kmentt. “If countries didn’t show up, it was not a reaction to something we did.”

There has been —and remains — as Kmnett noted, considerable opposition toward the TPNW, particularly from the nuclear weapon countries. The U.S. Ambassador to the UN at the time, Nikki Haley, now apparently running for president on the Republican ticket, was so frightened by the Treaty that, as ICAN reported, “on the first day of treaty negotiations, she hosted a press conference outside the room where negotiations were to take place, criticizing the pursuit of a prohibition treaty.”………………………………… more https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/04/02/the-cost-of-being-wrong/

April 3, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

THE LAST THING THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE NEED IS DEPLETED URANIUM

27 Mar 2023 • by Kate Hudson, Stop the War Coalition

KATE HUDSON: THE USE OF DU RUNS COUNTER TO THE BASIC RULES AND PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW

In a shocking development, the government has announced it will be sending depleted uranium (DU) rounds to Ukraine along with Challenger 2 tanks. As we know from several wars in the past few decades, the health consequences for Ukrainian civilians will be high. DU is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal and it’s a by-product of the enrichment process used to make reactor-grade uranium. Its chemical and physical properties have made it popular for a range of military and commercial uses: its density and its ability to self-sharpen attracted the attention of the US Department of Defense (DoD) in the late 1950s. The military was looking to increase the armour piercing capacity of munitions and to strengthen the armour of tanks. DU seemed to fit the bill. But its use has had a devastating impact on the populations caught up in numerous conflicts, with the terrible type of health consequences that we associate with radiation impacts.

………………………. The risk is not that DU munitions will cause a nuclear explosion. It’s that the impact of their use causes toxic or radioactive dust to be released and if this is subsequently inhaled or ingested in other ways, it has very significant negative health consequences. After the first Gulf War the DoD Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses (OSAGWI) identified a number of DU exposure scenarios including through wounds caused by DU fragments, inhalation of airborne DU particles, ingestion of DU residues, or wound contamination by DU residues.

DU munitions were used on a large scale by the US and UK in the Gulf War in 1991 and in Iraq in 2003. Their use has caused a sharp increase in the incidence rates of some cancers, such as breast cancer and lymphoma, in the areas where it has been used. It has also been implicated in a rise in birth defects from areas adjacent to the main Gulf War battlefields. Other health problems associated with DU include kidney failure, nervous system disorders, lung disease and reproductive problems. 

 A report funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2013 showed that more than 400 tonnes of DU ammunition were estimated to have been used in 1991 and 2003, the vast majority by US forces. The report showed that the Iraqi government’s Radiation Protection Centre had identified between 300 and 365 contaminated sites by 2006, mostly in the Basra region in southern Iraq. As well as warning of contamination being spread by poorly regulated scrap metal dealers, including children, it also shared evidence that DU munitions were fired at light vehicles, buildings and other civilian infrastructure including the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in Baghdad –  in spite of official assurances of military-only armoured targets.

Its use in the former Yugoslavia by NATO forces in 1995 and 1999 led to the same type of consequences. It was also used by the US in Syria in 2015. The impacts have not been confined to local populations – they have also affected the troops involved in or close to their use, and also military clean-up teams sent to deal with the impact of the DU. The severe health consequences have led to the terms ‘Gulf War syndrome’ and ‘Balkan syndrome’ entering our vocabulary. The Ministry of Defence disputes the risks of DU, yet it recommends ‘ongoing surveillance’ for veterans with embedded DU fragments.

No treaty explicitly banning the use of DU is yet in force, but it is clear that its use runs counter to the basic rules and principles of International Humanitarian Law. In 2006, the European Parliament strengthened its previous calls for a moratorium by calling for an introduction of a total ban, classifying the use of DU, along with white phosphorus, as inhumane. Since 2007, repeated UN General Assembly resolutions have highlighted serious concerns over the use of DU weapons. The UK, together with the US, France and Israel are the only states that have consistently voted against the resolutions.

The British government must put an immediate end to its use of DU – inflicting it on the people of Ukraine is the last thing they need. https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/the-last-thing-the-ukrainian-people-need-is-depleted-uranium/?link_id=14&can_id=6af7fc84f5bc6c4d25d736c71bd0eab7&source=email-europe-for-peace-stop-the-war-in-ukraine-3&email_referrer=email_1865172&email_subject=uniting-european-anti-war-forces

April 2, 2023 Posted by | depleted uranium, MIDDLE EAST | 2 Comments

Cancer as Weapon: Sowing Battlefields With Depleted Uranium

If the US has kept silent, the Brits haven’t. A 1991 study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority predicted that if less than 10 percent of the particles released by depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq and Kuwait were inhaled it could result in as many as “300,000 probable deaths.”

 excuses in the absence of any action to address the situation are growing very thin indeed. Doug Rokke, the health physicist for the US Army who oversaw the partial clean up of depleted uranium bomb fragments in Kuwait, is now sick. His body registers 5,000 times the level of radiation considered “safe”. 

CounterPunch, BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR 29 Mar 23

With the UK’s unconscionable decision to send Depleted Uranium ammunition to Ukraine, it’s perhaps useful to revisit the environmental and health consequences of the US’s widespread use of such weapons in Iraq and Kuwait during the first Gulf War. This short essay is adapted from my book, Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature.

At the close of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was denounced as a ferocious villain for ordering his retreating troops to destroy Kuwaiti oil fields, clotting the air with poisonous clouds of black smoke and saturating the ground with swamps of crude. It was justly called an environmental war crime.

But months of bombing of Iraq by US and British planes and cruise missiles has left behind an even more deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the US hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles.

It took less than a decade for the health consequences from this radioactive bombing campaign to begin to coming into focus. And they are dire, indeed. Iraqi physicians call it “the white death”-leukemia. Since 1990, the incident rate of leukemia in Iraq has grown by more than 600 percent. The situation is compounded by Iraq’s forced isolations and the sadistic sanctions regime, recently described by UN secretary general Kofi Annan as “a humanitarian crisis”, that makes detection and treatment of the cancers all the more difficult.

“We have proof of traces of DU in samples taken for analysis and that is really bad for those who assert that cancer cases have grown for other reasons,” said Dr. Umid Mubarak, Iraq’s health minister……………

“The desert dust carries death,” said Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, an oncologist and member England’s Royal Society of Physicians. “Our studies indicate that more than forty percent of the population around Basra will get cancer. We are living through another Hiroshima.”

Most of the leukemia and cancer victims aren’t soldiers. They are civilians. And many of them are children. The US-dominated Iraqi Sanctions Committee in New York has denied Iraq’s repeated requests for cancer treatment equipment and drugs, even painkillers such as morphine. As a result, the overflowing hospitals in towns such as Basra are left to treat the cancer-stricken with aspirin………………………………………………..

Depleted uranium is a rather benign sounding name for uranium-238, the trace elements left behind when the fissionable material is extracted from uranium-235 for use in nuclear reactors and weapons. For decades, this waste was a radioactive nuisance, piling up at plutonium processing plants across the country. By the late 1980s there was nearly a billion tons of the material.

Then weapons designers at the Pentagon came up with a use for the tailings: they could be molded into bullets and bombs. The material was free and there was plenty at hand. Also uranium is a heavy metal, denser than lead. This makes it perfect for use in armor-penetrating weapons, designed to destroy tanks, armored-personnel carriers and bunkers.

When the tank-busting bombs explode, the depleted uranium oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air like carcinogenic dust, carried on the desert winds for decades. The lethal dust is inhaled, sticks to the fibers of the lungs, and eventually begins to wreck havoc on the body: tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune systems, leukemias.

In 1943, the doomsday men associated with the Manhattan Project speculated that uranium and other radioactive materials could be spread across wide swaths of land to contain opposing armies. Gen. Leslie Grove, head of the project, asserted that uranium weapons could be expected to cause “permanent lung damage.” In the late, 1950s Al Gore’s father, the senator from Tennessee, proposed dousing the demilitarized zone in Korea with uranium as a cheap failsafe against an attack from the North Koreans.

After the Gulf War, Pentagon war planners were so delighted with the performance of their radioactive weapons that ordered a new arsenal and under Bill Clinton’s orders fired them at Serb positions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia. More than a 100 of the DU bombs have been used in the Balkans over the last six years.

Already medical teams in the region have detected cancer clusters near the bomb sites. The leukemia rate in Sarajevo, pummeled by American bombs in 1996, has tripled in the last five years. But it’s not just the Serbs who are ill and dying. NATO and UN peacekeepers in the region are also coming down with cancer. As of January 23, eight Italian soldiers who served in the region have died of leukemia.

The Pentagon has shuffled through a variety of rationales and excuses. ……………………………

If the US has kept silent, the Brits haven’t. A 1991 study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority predicted that if less than 10 percent of the particles released by depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq and Kuwait were inhaled it could result in as many as “300,000 probable deaths.”

The British estimate assumed that the only radioactive ingredient in the bombs dropped on Iraq was depleted uranium. It wasn’t. A new study of the materials inside these weapons describes them as a “nuclear cocktail,” containing a mix of radioactive elements, including plutonium and the highly radioactive isotope uranium-236. These elements are 100,000 times more dangerous than depleted uranium.

Typically, the Pentagon has tried to dump the blame on the Department of Energy’s sloppy handling of its weapons production plants.

 He knows where to place the blame. “There can be no reasonable doubt about this,” Rokke told Australian journalist John Pilger. “As a result of heavy metal and radiological poison of DU, people in southern Iraq are experiencing respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers. Members of my own team have died or are dying from cancer.”

Depleted uranium has a half-life of more than 4 billion years, approximately the age of the Earth. Thousand of acres of land in the Balkans, Kuwait and southern Iraq have been contaminated forever. If George Bush Sr., Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Bill Clinton are still casting about for a legacy, there’s a grim one that will stay around for an eternity.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/29/cancer-as-weapon-sowing-battlefields-with-depleted-uranium/

March 31, 2023 Posted by | depleted uranium, USA | 1 Comment

Number of usable nuclear warheads increased in 2022 — report

https://www.dw.com/en/number-of-usable-nuclear-warheads-increased-in-2022-report/a-65169976 29 Mar 23

The world’s stockpile of usable nuclear warheads increased by over 130 in 2022, Norwegian People’s Aid has reported. The authors have warned of the risk that nuclear weapons pose to humanity.

The number of nuclear warheads that states could deploy reached a total of 9,576 at the beginning of 2023, up from 9,440 the previous year, according to a report published by the NGO Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) on Wednesday.

The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor report said that the weaponized nuclear power amounted to a “collective destructive power of more than 135,000 Hiroshima bombs.”

The issue of nuclear weapons has become its most prominent since the end of the Cold War thanks in part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent aggressive rhetoric, as well as fears over Iran’s nuclear program and North Korea’s renewed missile tests.

Warhead build-up is a ‘worrying trend’

Wednesday’s report pointed out that the total number of warheads has decreased because the US and Russia dismantle some of their older weapons every year.

However, NPA’s Grethe Ostern warned that the construction of new warheads may soon outpace the dismantling of old ones.

“This increase is worrying, and continues a trend that started in 2017. If this does not stop, we will soon see an increase also in the total number of nuclear weapons in the world for the first time since the Cold War,” she said.

Some five countries are responsible for the increase in ready-to-use warheads, according to Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists and contributor to the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor.

“Russia, China, India, North Korea, and Pakistan continued to expand their stockpiles of warheads in 2022, bringing about a corresponding increase of 136 warheads also in the global total of stockpiled warheads available for use by the military,” Kristensen said.

Nuclear tensions threatening the planet

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently ramped up nuclear tensions by announcing that so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons would be deployed in Belarus, on the EU’s border

He justified the move by pointing to the presence of US nuclear weapons in various countries close to Russia over the years, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Russia has the world’s largest nuclear weapons stockpile.

The total number of nuclear warheads reached a peak of 70,000 in 1986 at the height of tensions between the US and the Soviet Union, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

This number was down to 12,512 in 2023, but still enough to bring an end to life on the planet as we know it.

“The Ukraine crisis has demonstrated that nuclear weapons do not create peace and stability. They don’t deter aggression, but enable conventional wars and incentivize risk-taking that could lead to nuclear war,” NPA’s Secretary General Henriette Westhrin said.

March 31, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine utilises space technology

The Global Network monthly space video this time reviews how space satellites are used by the US-NATO to target Russian-ethnic regions of the Donbass in eastern Ukraine and Russian military forces.

Elon Musk’s Space X company is deploying tens of thousands of Starlink satellites in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). The parking lots in LEO are getting dangerously crowded. Scientists fear cascading collisions as a result.

   The Pentagon is using Musk’s Starlink satellites to provide surveillance and targeting information to the Ukrainian army. Whichever nation(s) control LEO enables them to have considerable advantage on the battlefield.

 China is responding by announcing it will launch 13,000 satellites into LEO in order to prevent the US-NATO from totally filling up the scarce orbital parking spaces.Danger exists as major powers compete for access and/or domination in space.
A new United Nations space weapons ban treaty is needed now more than ever. 

March 30, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, space travel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia Calls Out ‘Nuclear Weapons Hypocrisy’: US Has Tactical Nukes In 5 Non-Nuclear Weapon States

“For the last 60 years Washington has been playing a key role in NATO’s nuclear sharing missions by supporting deployment of its tactical nuclear weapons in five non-nuclear weapon states – Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey,“

BY TYLER DURDEN, ZERO HEDGE, WEDNESDAY, MAR 29, 2023 

The Kremlin has blasted what a Russian official called the United States’ “vivid example of hypocrisy” as part of the latest war of words in the wake of President Putin’s announcing he has stationed tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov on Tuesday called out Washington’s “extremely short memory” – given it “has long been systematically destroying the legal basis of bilateral relations in strategic sphere,” which is a reference to the collapse of multiple nuclear treaties of late, including ‘Open Skies’ and the INF Treaty in 2019. New START is also looking to come to an end at the rate things are going.

CBS recounts of what Putin said:

Russia has ratcheted up tensions with the West amid its ongoing war against Ukraine, with President Vladimir Putin saying Moscow will deploy “tactical nuclear weapons” in Belarus. The Russian leader said 10 fighter jets capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons — generally a reference to smaller weapons used for limited battlefield attacks, rather than larger, long-range “strategic” nuclear weapons — were already deployed in Belarus. ………..

In response, the US State Department condemned the Russian leader’s “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” and said that “no other country is inflicting such damage on arms control, nor seeking to undermine strategic stability in Europe.”

The scathing denunciation had been issued by US State Department representative Vedant Patel………………

Antonov underscored that the US has long stationed nuclear weapons not far from Russia: “For the last 60 years Washington has been playing a key role in NATO’s nuclear sharing missions by supporting deployment of its tactical nuclear weapons in five non-nuclear weapon states – Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey,” he said. Putin had days ago voiced a similar rationale… https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-calls-out-nuclear-weapons-hypocrisy-us-has-tactical-nukes-5-non-nuclear-weapon5-non-nuclear-weapon

March 30, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Aukus subs deal firms China support for Asean nuclear weapon-free zone

Beijing ‘willing’ to become first nuclear-armed state to sign treaty pledging to keep the weapons out of Southeast Asia

China’s efforts to woo its neighbours is a counter to US alliance building in the region, which now includes nuclear-powered submarines for Australia

Laura Zhou SCMP, 28 Mar 23

China is willing to sign a treaty making Southeast Asia a nuclear weapons-free zone, in Beijing’s latest effort to woo its neighbours and counter Washington’s decision to speed the sale of nuclear-powered submarines and technology to Australia.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang made the pledge at a meeting with Kao Kim Hourn, secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in Beijing on Monday. It would make China the first major nuclear power to commit to the zone.

Asean secretary general Kao Kim Hourn (left) and Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang in Beijing on Monday. Photo: Xinhua

China is willing to sign a treaty making Southeast Asia a nuclear weapons-free zone, in Beijing’s latest effort to woo its neighbours and counter Washington’s decision to speed the sale of nuclear-powered submarines and technology to Australia.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang made the pledge at a meeting with Kao Kim Hourn, secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in Beijing on Monday. It would make China the first major nuclear power to commit to the zone.

“China is willing to take the lead in signing the protocol to the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone treaty and advocate with Asean for solidarity and win-win cooperation to safeguard regional security and stability,” he said.

The treaty has been in force since 1997 and obliges the 10 Asean member states “not to develop, manufacture or otherwise acquire, possess or have control over nuclear weapons; station or transport nuclear weapons by any means; or test or use nuclear weapons”.

None of the five recognised nuclear-armed states – China, France, Russia, Britain and the US – has acceded to the treaty’s protocol, which implies a commitment not to use nuclear weapons within the zone or against any contracting state.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in 2021 that Beijing was ready to sign the protocol – also known as the Bangkok Treaty – “at the earliest possible date”, just months after the US-led Aukus alliance with Australia and Britain was unveiled.

The latest pledge comes at a time when China is increasingly vigilant towards Aukus, which two weeks ago announced a pathway for Australia to acquire three, possibly five, US nuclear-powered submarines by the early 2030s.

In his meeting with Kao, Qin said China’s domestic and foreign policies had maintained “a high degree of stability and continuity”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout.

Qin said China’s policies would “inject more stability into regional peace and tranquillity, while providing more strong momentum for regional development and prosperity”………………….

Beijing is strongly opposed to Aukus and the Quad – a US-led partnership with Japan, India and Australia – which together form the centrepiece of Washington’s strategy of building alliances to contain China, in its view.

The Aukus announcement – which may pave the way for Canberra to eventually build its own attack submersibles – was described by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin as “nothing but selfish”. The US, Australia and Britain “had gone further down a wrong and dangerous road”, he said.

The deal also intensified regional concerns in Southeast Asia. Hours after the announcement, Malaysia said it was important for all countries to refrain “from any provocation that could potentially trigger an arms race or affect peace and security in the region”.

Indonesia, another major power in Southeast Asia, urged Australia to comply with its non-proliferation treaty obligations, saying that it was the responsibility of all countries to maintain peace and stability in the region…………………………..  https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3215103/aukus-subs-deal-firms-china-support-asean-nuclear-weapon-free-zone

March 30, 2023 Posted by | China, weapons and war | Leave a comment

No Country for Nuclear Madmen

Contrary to his 2020 campaign platform, President Biden has insisted that the United States must retain the option of first use of nuclear weapons.

Everything that can be done must done to avert global nuclear annihilation.

March 28, 2023 Norman Solomon  COMMON DREAMS  https://portside.org/2023-03-28/no-country-nuclear-madmen—

he announcement by President Vladimir Putin over the weekend that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus marked a further escalation of potentially cataclysmic tensions over the war in neighboring Ukraine. As the Associated Press reported, “Putin said the move was triggered by Britain’s decision this past week to provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.”

There’s always an excuse for nuclear madness, and the United States has certainly provided ample rationales for the Russian leader’s display of it. American nuclear warheads have been deployed in Europe since the mid-1950s, and current best estimates say 100 are there now—in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

Count on U.S. corporate media to (appropriately) condemn Putin’s announcement while dodging key realities of how the USA, for decades, has been pushing the nuclear envelope toward conflagration. The U.S. government’s breaking of its pledge not to expand NATO eastward after the fall of the Berlin Wall—instead expanding into 10 Eastern European countries—was only one aspect of official Washington’s reckless approach.

During this century, the runaway motor of nuclear irresponsibility has been mostly revved by the United States. In 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a vital agreement that had been in effect for 30 years. Negotiated by the Nixon administration and the Soviet Union, the treaty declared that its limits would be a “substantial factor in curbing the race in strategic offensive arms.”

His lofty rhetoric aside, President Barack Obama launched a $1.7 trillion program for further developing U.S. nuclear forces under the euphemism of “modernization.” To make matters worse, President Trump pulled the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a crucial pact between Washington and Moscow that had eliminated an entire category of missiles from Europe since 1988.

The madness has remained resolutely bipartisan. President Joe Biden quickly dashed hopes that he would be a more enlightened leader about nuclear weapons. Far from pushing to reinstate the canceled treaties, from the outset of his presidency Biden boosted measures like placing ABM systems in Poland and Romania. Calling them “defensive” does not change the fact that those systems can be retrofitted with offensive cruise missiles. A quick look at a map would underscore why such moves were so ominous when viewed through Kremlin windows.

Contrary to his 2020 campaign platform, President Biden has insisted that the United States must retain the option of first use of nuclear weapons. His administration’s landmark Nuclear Posture Review, issued a year ago, reaffirmed rather than renounced that option. A leader of the organization Global Zero put it this way: “Instead of distancing himself from the nuclear coercion and brinkmanship of thugs like Putin and Trump, Biden is following their lead. There’s no plausible scenario in which a nuclear first strike by the U.S. makes any sense whatsoever. We need smarter strategies.”

Daniel Ellsberg—whose book The Doomsday Machine truly should be required reading in the White House and the Kremlin—summed up humanity’s extremely dire predicament and imperative when he told the New York Times days ago: “For 70 years, the U.S. has frequently made the kind of wrongful first-use threats of nuclear weapons that Putin is making now in Ukraine. We should never have done that, nor should Putin be doing it now. I’m worried that his monstrous threat of nuclear war to retain Russian control of Crimea is not a bluff. President Biden campaigned in 2020 on a promise to declare a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons. He should keep that promise, and the world should demand the same commitment from Putin.”

We can make a difference—maybe even the difference—to avert global nuclear annihilation. This week, TV viewers will be reminded of such possibilities by the new documentary The Movement and the “Madman” on PBS. The film “shows how two antiwar protests in the fall of 1969—the largest the country had ever seen—pressured President Nixon to cancel what he called his ‘madman’ plans for a massive escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam, including a threat to use nuclear weapons. At the time, protestors had no idea how influential they could be and how many lives they may have saved.”

In 2023, we have no idea how influential we can be and how many lives we might save—if we’re really willing to try.

March 30, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A $1 trillion defense budget would be madness — Beyond Nuclear International

And more than half of it will go to weapons manufacturers

https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/03/26/a-1-trillion-defense-budget-would-be-madness/

Biden has requested an obscene $886 billion for defense, but it could go higher

By William Hartung, 26 Mar 23

The Pentagon has released its budget request for Fiscal Year 2024. The figure for the Pentagon alone is a hefty $842 billion. That’s $69 billion more than the $773 billion the department requested for Fiscal Year 2023

Total spending on national defense — including work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy — comes in at $886 billion. Adding in likely emergency military aid packages for Ukraine later this year plus the potential tens of billions of dollars in Congressional add-ons could push total spending for national defense to as much as $950 billion or more for FY 2024. The result could be the highest military budget since World War II, far higher than at the peaks of the Korean or Vietnam Wars or the height of the Cold War. 

The proposed budget is far more than is needed to provide an effective defense of the United States and its allies.

If past experience is any guide, more than half of the new Pentagon budget will go to contractors, with the biggest share going to the top five — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — to build everything from howitzers and tanks to intercontinental ballistic missiles. Much of the funding for contractors will come from spending on buying, researching, and developing weapons, which accounts for $315 billion of the new budget request.

he National Priorities Project gives us a look at the imbalance of government spending for 2021 with the military consuming almost half.

As suggested above, Congress will probably add a substantial amount to the Pentagon’s request, largely for systems and facilities located in the states and districts of key members. That’s no way to craft a budget — or defend a country. When it comes to defense, Congress should engage in careful oversight, not special interest politics. 

Unfortunately, in recent years the House and Senate have accelerated the practice of jacking up the Pentagon’s budget request, adding $25 billion in FY 2022 and $45 billion in FY 2023. Given threat inflation with respect to China and the ongoing war in Ukraine, there is a danger that the $45 billion added for FY2023 could be the floor for what might be added by Congress in the course of this year’s budget debate.

Exceptions to the rush to throw more money at the Pentagon may come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Representatives Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) have introduced the “People Over Pentagon Act,” which calls for a $100 billion annual cut in the DoD budget. A group of conservative lawmakers centered around the Freedom Caucus have called for a freeze on the discretionary budget at FY2022 levels. But different members have given different views on how Pentagon spending would fit into a budget freeze, from assertions that it will be “on the table” to a denial by one at least one member, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), that Pentagon cuts should come into play at all.

It has been reported that President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that we should spend all we need for national defense and not one penny more. But the new motto of the Pentagon and the Congress appears to be “spend now and ask questions later.” Rather than matching funding to a viable national security strategy, the Pentagon and the Congress are pushing for whatever the political market will bear. The notion that tradeoffs need to be made against other urgent national priorities is a foreign concept to most members of the House and Senate, as they have routinely raised the Pentagon budget at the expense of other urgent national needs. 

There is more than money at stake. An open-ended strategy that seeks to develop capabilities to win a war with Russia or China, fight regional wars against Iran or North Korea, and sustain a global war on terror that includes operations in at least 85 countries is a recipe for endless conflict.

We can make America and its allies safer for far less money if we adopt a more realistic, restrained strategy and drive a harder bargain with weapons contractors that too often engage in price gouging and cost overruns while delivering dysfunctional systems that aren’t appropriate for addressing the biggest threats to our security.

The Congressional Budget Office has crafted three illustrative options that could ensure our security while spending $1 trillion less over the next decade. A strategy that incorporates aspects of these plans and streamlines the Pentagon budget in other areas could be sustained at roughly $150 billion per year less than current levels. 

A new approach would take a more objective, evidence-based view of the military challenges posed by Russia and China, rely more on allies to provide security in their own regions, reduce the U.S. global military footprint, and scale back the Pentagon’s $2 trillion plan to build a new generation of nuclear weapons. Cutting wasteful spending practices and slowing or replacing spending on unworkable or outmoded systems like the F-35 and a new $13 billion aircraft carrier could save billions more. And reducing spending on the half a million-plus private contractors employed by the Pentagon could save hundreds of billions over the next decade.


The Pentagon doesn’t need more spending. It needs more spending discipline, tied to a realistic strategy that sets clear priorities and acknowledges that some of the greatest risks we face are not military in nature. Today’s announcement is just the opening gambit in this year’s debate over the Pentagon budget. Hopefully critics of runaway spending will have more traction this year than has been the case for the past several years. If not, $1 trillion in annual military spending may be just around the corner, at great cost to taxpayers and to the safety and security of the country as a whole.

William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget. He was previously the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-director of the Center’s Sustainable Defense Task Force.

March 26, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Declassified Video Shows How B-52 Crews Would Conduct Nuclear Strikes During Cold War

The Aviationist March 26, 2023 STEFANO D’URSO

A 1960 Strategic Air Command training video familiarized B-52 crews with the devastating effects of nuclear weapons and how to navigate through a nuclear battlefield.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently declassified some very interesting training films and film reports that the Strategic Air Command prepared in the 1960s to prepare bomber pilots and crews for a potential nuclear war. Among these there is the United States Air Force Training Film 5363, “Nuclear Effects During SAC Delivery Missions,” made in 1960 and which kept its secret classification until now.

The purpose of Training Film 5363 was to familiarize SAC pilots and crew members with the devastating effects of nuclear weapons detonations and the detailed plans that were developed so the crews could evade the dangers of a nuclear battlefield and return home after completing their mission. These plans were among the contents of the “Combat Mission Folders,” which included guidance needed to reach targets and return to base safely and were assigned to each nuclear-armed bomber on alert duty.

…………………… The film begins with a B-52 flying a sortie of the Emergency War Order, launched under Positive Control and on its way to the “go/no-go” position, but without the crew knowing if this is a real mission or an exercise until they get there. Before eventually going in, however, the narrator explains that, while they know that the mission can be successfully accomplished as it was carefully planned and reviewed by highly qualified combat planners and they flew countless profile missions, they need to know the nuclear effects of a detonation.

The narrator then takes the viewers trough the basics of a nuclear detonation’s thermal, blast and radiation effects and the efforts that the U.S. Air Force had taken to prepare the crews for situations where they might experience them. In fact, the central part of the film covers the effects of nuclear explosions of both aircraft and crew and the measures taken to minimize crew exposure, like carefully planned routes that created a safe distance between the bomber and the detonation of their weapon and the detonations caused by other SAC bombers operating in the same area.

The film then returns to the B-52 approaching the turnaround point, when then a radio message from SAC comes in: “Sky King. Sky King. This is Migrate. This is Migrate. Do not answer. Break. Break. Alpha Sierra Foxtrot Juliet Oscar Papa Mike Tango. Break. Go-Code.” The crew scrambles to verify the code and discover that this is the go code for a real mission: “Pilot to crew. We checked the go code and verified it. This is it. We’re going in”.

After a very brief moment of disbelief, the crew members get down to business and prepare the aircraft for the nuclear strike mission as they are about to cross the H-Hour Control Line on the way to their assigned target in the Soviet Union. As they navigate towards the target, the crew experience the shockwave from another nuclear bomb dropped in the vicinity of their route, before a low-altitude flight over lakes, mountains, forests and fields to avoid Soviet air defense missiles…………………………………………………. more https://theaviationist.com/2023/03/26/declassified-video-shows-how-b-52-crews-would-conduct-cold-war-nuclear-strikes/

March 26, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Where the $1.3 Trillion Per Year U.S. Military Budget Goes

The Duran, by Eric Zuesse, March 24, 2023

Nobody can give a precise dollar-number to U.S. ‘Defense’ spending because the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department has never been able to pass an audit, and is by far the most corrupt of all federal Departments (and is the ONLY Department that has never passed an audit), and also because much of America’s military spending is being paid out from other federal Departments in order to keep down the published annual U.S. Government ‘Defense’ expenditure numbers (which come from ONLY the “U.S. ‘Defense’ Department). 

Those are expenditures for America’s privatized and overwhelmingly profit-driven Military-Industrial Complex. (By contrast: Russia and China require, by law, that their armaments-firms be majority-owned by the Government itself.)

According to the best available estimates, the U.S. Government has been spending, in total, for over a decade now, around $1.3T to $1.5T annually on ‘defense’, and this is around half of all military spending worldwide by all 200-or-so nations, and is more than half (around 53%) of all of the U.S. federal Government’s ‘discretionary’ (or congressionally voted for) annual expenditures.

Unlike regular manufacturers, which sell entirely or mainly to consumers and to businesses, not to their Government, armament-firms need to control their Government in order to control their markets (which are their Government and its ‘allied’ Governments — including NATO), and so they (in purely capitalist countries such as the U.S.) do control their Government. This is why the armaments-business (except in countries whose armaments-sector is socialized) is infamously corrupt. In order to hide the extent of that corruption (and to promote ever-higher military spending), the ‘news’-media need — in those countries — to be likewise effectively controlled by the investors in those firms.

Consequently, America, which has no national-security threat from any country (so, these astronomical ‘defense’-expenditures are blatantly inappropriate), spends annually around half of all of the money that the entire world spends on the military. And most of that money gets paid to its armaments-firms. Or, as Stephen Semler, an expert on these matters, put it regarding last year’s numbers, “How much of the $858 billion authorized by the FY2023 NDAA will be transferred to military contractors? I estimate $452 billion.”  ………………………………

If this had not been happening each year after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, then the current U.S. federal debt would be far less, if any at all — but, in any case, that expense (which went, and is going, to exceptionally rich individuals) will be paid by future generations of Americans, by means of both increased taxes and reduced services from the U.S. Government. What pays for bombs (and funds the purchase of yachts) today will be taken from everyone’s infants tomorrow. And it is taking millions of lives in the targeted lands, and has been doing so for decades now. A psychopathic U.S. Government is producing these results………………………………………………………………………………………………

The presumption is that the voters don’t care, and that the ‘news’-media won’t enlighten the voters about this matter, and about how it impacts, for example, which nations the US will categorize as being an “ally,” to sell weapons to, and which nations it will categorize as being an “enemy,” to target for conquest………………………………………………….. more https://theduran.com/where-the-1-3-trillion-per-year-u-s-military-budget-goes/

March 26, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Stolen Valor: The U.S. Volunteers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bicker

People who would not be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrainian front, with ready access to American weaponry.

By Justin Scheck and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, New York Times . Justin Scheck, an international investigative reporter, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, the Ukraine correspondent, reported this article from Ukraine and around Europe.

March 25, 2023, 

They rushed to Ukraine by the thousands, many of them Americans who promised to bring military experience, money or supplies to the battleground of a righteous war. Hometown newspapers hailed their commitment, and donors backed them with millions of dollars.

Now, after a year of combat, many of these homespun groups of volunteers are fighting with themselves and undermining the war effort. Some have wasted money or stolen valor. Others have cloaked themselves in charity while also trying to profit off the war, records show.

One retired Marine lieutenant colonel from Virginia is the focus of a U.S. federal investigation into the potentially illegal export of military technology. A former Army soldier arrived in Ukraine only to turn traitor and defect to Russia. A Connecticut man who lied about his military service has posted live updates from the battlefield — including his exact location — and boasted about his easy access to American weaponry. A former construction worker is hatching a plan to use fake passports to smuggle in fighters from Pakistan and Iran.

And in one of the more curious entanglements, one of the largest volunteer groups is embroiled in a power struggle involving an Ohio man who falsely claimed to have been both a U.S. Marine and a LongHorn Steakhouse assistant manager. The dispute also involves a years-old incident on Australian reality TV.

Such characters have a place in Ukraine’s defense because of the arms-length role the United States has taken: The Biden administration sends weapons and money but not professional troops. That means people who would not be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrainian front — often with unchecked access to weapons and military equipment.

Many of the volunteers who hurried to Ukraine did so selflessly and acted with heroism. Some have lost their lives. Foreigners have rescued civilians, aided the wounded and fought ferociously alongside Ukrainians. Others raised money for crucial supplies.

But in Europe’s largest land war since 1945, the do-it-yourself approach does not discriminate between trained volunteers and those who lack the skills or discipline to assist effectively.

The New York Times reviewed more than 100 pages of documents from inside volunteer groups and interviewed more than 30 volunteers, fighters, fund-raisers, donors and American and Ukrainian officials. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

The interviews and research reveal a series of deceptions, mistakes and squabbles that have hindered the volunteer drive that began after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, when President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called for help. “Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country, please come over,” he said. “We will give you weapons.”

Thousands answered the call. Some joined military groups like the International Legion, which Ukraine formed for foreign fighters. Others took roles in support or fund-raising. With Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, under attack, there was little time for vetting arrivals. So people with problematic pasts, including checkered or fabricated military records, became entrenched in the Legion and a constellation of other volunteer groups.

Asked about these problems, the Ukrainian military did not address specific issues but did say it was on guard because Russian agents regularly tried to infiltrate volunteer groups. “We investigated such cases and handed them over to law enforcement agencies,” said Andriy Cherniak, a representative for Ukrainian military intelligence.

‘A Million Lies’

One of the best-known Americans on the battlefield is James Vasquez. Days after the invasion, Mr. Vasquez, a Connecticut home-improvement contractor, announced he was leaving for Ukraine. His local newspaper told the tale of a former U.S. Army staff sergeant who left behind his job and family and picked up a rifle and a rucksack on the front line.

Since then, he has posted battlefield videos online, at least once broadcasting his unit’s precise location to everyone, including the enemy. He used his story to solicit donations. “I was in Kuwait during Desert Storm, and I was in Iraq after 9/11,” Mr. Vasquez said in a fund-raising video. He added, “This is a whole different animal.”

Mr. Vasquez, in fact, was never deployed to Kuwait, Iraq or anywhere else, a Pentagon spokeswoman said. He specialized in fuel and electrical repairs. And he left the Army Reserve not as a sergeant as he claimed, but as a private first class, one of the Army’s lowest ranks.

Still, Mr. Vasquez had easy access to weapons, including American rifles. Where did they come from? “I’m not exactly sure,” Mr. Vasquez said in a text message. The rifles, he added, were “brand-new, out of the box and we have plenty.” He also tweeted that he should not have to worry about international rules of war while in Ukraine.

He fought alongside Da Vinci’s Wolves, a Ukrainian far-right battalion, until this week, when The Times asked about his false military service claims. He immediately deactivated his Twitter account and said he might leave Ukraine because authorities discovered he was fighting without a required military contract.

Mr. Vasquez said he had been misrepresenting his military record for decades. He acknowledged being kicked out of the Army but would not talk publicly about why. “I had to tell a million lies to get ahead,” Mr. Vasquez said in an interview. “I didn’t realize it was going to come to this.”

Public Quarrels

The International Legion, hastily formed by the Ukrainian government, spent 10 minutes or less checking each volunteer’s background early in the war, one Legion official said. So a Polish fugitive who had been jailed in Ukraine for weapon violations got a position leading troops. Soldiers told The Kyiv Independent that he misappropriated supplies, harassed women and threatened his soldiers………………………………………………………………..

The dispute goes to the heart of who can be trusted to speak for and raise money for the Legion……………………………………………………………………………………….

Misdirected Donations

……………………………………………………………………….. Examples of wasted money in the hands of well-intentioned people are common. Mriya Aid, a group led by an active-duty Canadian lieutenant colonel, spent around $100,000 from donors on high-tech U.S.-style night-vision devices. They ended up being less-effective Chinese models, internal documents show…………………..

Earlier this year, the Mozart Group, which two former Marines established to help Ukraine, disbanded after one sued the other, alleging theft and harassment.

Absent Paper Trail

…………………………………………………………………………….. Colonel Rawlings has said that his group is awaiting American nonprofit status. But he has not revealed his spending or proof of a nonprofit application to The Times or to donors who have asked. So it is not clear where the money is going. “I believed these guys,” said Shaun Stants, who said he organized a fund-raiser in October in Pittsburgh but was never shown the financial records he asked for. “And they took me for a fool.”

Corporate records in Poland and the U.S. show that Colonel Rawlings also started a for-profit company called Iron Forge. In an interview, he said he expected his charity and others to pay Iron Forge for transportation, meaning donor money would be used to finance his private venture. 

But he said no conflict of interest existed because Iron Forge would ultimately send money back to the charities. Details are being worked out, he said.

In the days after The Times approached Mr. Vasquez and others, members of the squabbling groups — Ripley’s, the Legion, the dissident Legion members and more — escalated their feud. They accused one another of misappropriating funds and lying about their credentials…………..

Najim Rahim contributed reporting from Berkeley, Calif., and Maria Varenikova and Daria Mitiuk from Kyiv, Ukraine.
 https://archive.is/VR4ge#selection-1457.0-1457.114

March 26, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Poland’s prime minister boasted of “very good compensation” from the European Union for Polish weapons sent to Ukraine

https://en.topwar.ru/213555-premer-ministr-polshi-pohvastal-ochen-horoshej-kompensaciej-ot-evrosojuza-za-otpravljaemoe-na-ukrainu-polskoe-oruzhie.html 25 Mar 23
The European Union will thank Poland for the supply of weapons to the Kyiv regime. This was stated by Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki, speaking to reporters following the results of the EU summit in Brussels.

Morawiecki noted that Warsaw is waiting for “very good compensation” for playing one of the leading roles in supplying Ukraine with a variety of weapons and military equipment. Earlier, by the way, the Polish leadership proudly stated that Poland is in second place after the United States in the list of countries providing military assistance to Ukraine.

The Polish Prime Minister also announced the amount of compensation from the EU authorities. According to him, even before Easter, Warsaw will receive 300 million euros, and then “another” 500-600 million euros. Thus, one of the key allies of the Kiev regime does not hide the financial interest in military assistance to Ukraine, and therefore in the further continuation of the Ukrainian conflict, at least in its current form.

According to Morawiecki, Warsaw will become the largest recipient of funds from the European Peace Fund in the coming months. The Polish government will be able to spend this money on the needs of ensuring the security and defense of Poland itself. For example, it is planned to acquire modern weapons of American and European production for the Polish Army, as well as to create, develop and improve their own lines for the production of weapons, military equipment and ammunition, the head of the Polish Cabinet of Ministers emphasized.

Note that Russia negatively assesses the transfer of military equipment and weapons to Ukraine by the West. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation has repeatedly warned the West that “weapon tranches” only entail a further escalation of the armed conflict.

March 26, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, weapons and war | 1 Comment

UK could fuel radioactive disaster in Ukraine – Russia

24 Mar 23,  https://www.rt.com/russia/573527-ukraine-uranium-radioactive-disaster/

Depleted uranium shells promised to Kiev by the UK would “cause irreparable harm” to soldiers and civilians alike, Moscow claimed.

The potential use of British-supplied depleted uranium shells by Ukraine would have a devastating impact on the country’s economy and population, lasting for centuries to come, the Russian Defense Ministry warned on Friday.

Speaking at a briefing, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who is in charge of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, issued a scathing criticism of the UK’s plans to support Kiev with armor-

rounds containing depleted uranium.

He noted that such munitions have only ever been deployed in combat by NATO countries, most notably during the Iraq War, when the US used at least 300 tons of depleted uranium-piercing rounds containing uranium.

“As a result, the radiation situation in the [Iraqi] city of Fallujah was much worse than in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear bombings by the United States,” Kirillov stated, recalling that Fallujah had been dubbed “the second Chernobyl,” while the local population suffered from a skyrocketing number of cancer cases.

The West is well aware of the consequences of using such weapons, the general stressed. Even though it “will cause irreparable harm” to the health of Ukrainian troops and civilians, “NATO countries, in particular the UK, express a readiness to supply this type of weapon to the Kiev regime,” Kirillov stated.

He warned that the use of the munitions will contaminate farmland. “In addition to infecting its own population, this will cause tremendous economic damage to the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine… reducing any export of agricultural produce from Ukrainian territory for many decades, if not centuries to come,” the general said.

The UK’s plans to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine for use with Challenger 2 battle tanks were first unveiled on Monday, prompting an outcry from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which called the move a sign of “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity” on the part of London and Washington.

While the US has said it does not plan to support Ukraine with such ammunition, it shrugged off Russian concerns over the matter, describing depleted uranium shells as “a commonplace type of munition” which has “been in use for decades.”

March 26, 2023 Posted by | depleted uranium, Ukraine | 1 Comment

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