Why does the United States have "massive stockpiles" of a banned weapon? There's a country that truly belongs on the 'state terrorist' list.
Neither the US nor Russia signed up to the international agreement on cluster weapons. Russia has been using them wholesale in Ukraine against civilians.
fun fact - cuba only got rid of their cluster weapons in 2018. btw definitely agree that the USA should dispose of theirs, but never going to happen unless Russia do the same.
I'm not sure where your information comes from, but a quick Google revealed that like all civilised countries, Cuba joined the treaty banning cluster bombs in 2016: https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/06/cuba-joins-global-ban-cluster-munitions Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on September 8, 2015, five years after the treaty went into effect, Cuba said it was considering accession. Ambassador Rodolfo Benítez Verson, Cuba’s representative at the conference, announced that “Cuba is carrying out the required constitutional procedures for the accession.” He said that Cuba “strongly supports the prohibition and complete elimination of cluster munitions and condemns its use.”
(Washington, DC) – Cuba acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions on April 6, 2016, following through on a pledge it made in September 2015, Human Rights Watch said today. Prior to that pledge, Cuba had been critical both of the convention’s provisions and the unconventional diplomatic process that led to it. “Cuba is showing others that it is wrong to cling to cluster munitions – weapons that inevitably cause harm to civilians,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch and chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition. “It also shows how concerns can be overcome in the interest of working together with other nations on the treaty, which provides the international framework for eradicating cluster munitions.”
You are correct, but the cluster munitions were only disposed of in 2018. There was a delay between signing the treaty and disposing of them.
I said before that I don't know that much about Ukraine and haven't really followed it that much, but I read up about its history today. What I thought - historical ancient territory, cruelly swallowed up by the Soviet Union and its sovereignty crushed and its cultural identity suppressed. Finally free and able to once again unite under its proud flag of independent historical Ukraine. Which its now defending against the evil Russian bear. Actuality - the territory was part of Poland, Romania, Germany, the Austro-Hungarians and several others. Mostly with some ruling parts of it and others other parts. Nobody even thought about the provinces that now make up Ukraine being a country. No idea of Ukraine until thw first independence movements around Victorian times, but then there was the 1st war and a lot of fighting on that territory and a lot of destruction. After, they formed the Ukrainian Soviet and were founder members of the USSR! And a big key part of it too. They weren't swallowed up by the USSR - they were the USSR! Lenin was big on regions having their own identities and the concept of Ukraine as a united region with its own identity and language was promoted. The early USSR also rebuilt and revived the region after the war. Good work all royally screwed up later by Stalin. Then the 2nd war. More destruction and 6m from that area dead. The Red Army pushes back the Nazis and their allies - liberates Ukraine and even grabs them a couple of extra provinces back from Romania (although a 3rd they took, they decided to give to Moldova instead). When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Ukraine was a country for the first time. It wasn't 're-established' or freed from the Soviet yoke. It had never existed in that territory of now as a country in its own right. It only became a country 32 years ago.
Interesting, but ultimately - so what? It does sound a little bit like you're trying to argue that it's ok to invade a country if it's only been in existence for 32 years.
Shame you missed out the 'important' bit of its history when its multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society really flourished during the membership Kievian Rus in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
@Clive_ofthe_Kremlin really interesting post. For me the most interesting time in Ukrainian history, until recently was definitely during the Second World War. The Nazis really missed a trick there. When they launched Operation Barbarossa they could have entered Ukraine as liberators from the Soviet Union. At that point in time many Ukrainians hated the USSR with the same passion that many modern Ukrainians now hate Russia. If the Nazis had entered Ukraine as liberators they would have gained valuable manpower for the invasion of Russia. Instead they treated them as untermenschun and murdered millions of them.
And of course the Ukrainian and Russian languages divergence only occurred 700 years ago. Barely worth the 52 million ethnic Ukrainians making such a fuss. After all in the 14th Century Russia did not exist. created in 1547. Nor did Greece (1830), Germany (1871), Romania (1859), Spain (1479), Italy (1870), Finland (1919) or Turkey (1923). Finland of course was from 1809 a province of Russia. Once a nation state is formed, its bad form of another one to try to invade and destroy it 25 years later.
After I wrote that post, I thought it might appear that I was arguing that it's OK to invade a country if it's new. But that was NOT my point. It was more about the impression that's given by the news. I honestly thought the ancient Kingdom of Ukraine dated back centuries with the same (more or less) borders. But no! The complete opposite. It's been a real mish-mash of provinces added here and taken away there. Different rulers and empires. Russian, German and Polish mainly. These historical aspects are not reported.... at all. A misrepresentation is put forward, leading to the misapprehension I had. @AndrewH63 Language divergence does not a country make. Almost every country has regional divergence of language, if not half a dozen different languages, which spread over country borders as though they weren't there. Which of course, being imaginary and thought up, they are not.
Yep, it seems that Stalin really treated them bad. There was a huge famine I believe. What a complete twwat that man was. That's probably what stoked up a lot of the anti-russian sentiment to a large extent. According to the history article I read, when the nazis invaded, it was some of those from the western-most provinces who joined up. The vast majority and especially the Eastern (now disputed) provinces were all for the Red Army.
Yeah 'was ruled by' doesn't sound too ideal. And if you're going to get conquered and occupied, then you can understand the Germans, the mighty Russians, the Austro-Hungarians even were quite tasty in their day. But the Lithuanians? Who knew Lithuania ever conquered anybody. And the third part of the ruling triumvirate was so shyte it didn't even have its own country. 'The Golden Horde' apparently. Some loose collection of Mongols and Turks who'd clubbed in together. Also a decent name for our family stand I reckon. As for the crimea, which I was advised by the news had been stolen and 'occupied' from the ancient Ukrainian lands, that was ruled by the bloody Venetians and Genoese! All the way from Italy! You'd think those Ukrainians would be quite accustomed to being invaded and occupied by now and would be a bit more phlegmatic about it. At least it's a big powerful country doing it, not a bloody joint effort from San Marino, Luxembourg and Togo.
I'm somewhat surprised to see you don't have some qualified praise at least for Stalin. I mean, he seemed very driven and organised for a start.
I think you’ll find many modern countries are actually fusions of a mish-mash of provinces, areas, princedoms, kingdoms etc… just like the constituent parts of the UK, which in itself is clearly a union of a collection of separate entities. Once they have decided to declare themselves to be a ‘nation state’ I think it’s quite reasonable to leave them alone.
Folk on social media commemorating that it’s nine years since Flight MH17 was downed by a missile from a Russian missile launcher. The launcher had been transported into the Donbas from Russia that day and was operated by two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist. 298 people were killed, 193 of them Dutch with 10 Brits. 43 Malaysians died, many of them crew and 27 Australians, including 3 children from the same family travelling with their Grandfather. It seems utterly bizarre, in retrospect, that the 2018 World Cup went ahead in Russia, but such is the ability of Russia to deny, of people to spread doubt on its behalf and the tentacles of its money long, that it did. https://twitter.com/thestanislawski/status/1680876628841320448?s=46&t=oqOMSJXE_g7J5C7kNPG9LA
https://news.sky.com/story/ten-kill...-yevgeny-prigozhin-on-passenger-list-12946006 Yevgeny Prigozhin repordedly part of passenger list of plane that was shot down by Russian Air Defence. Telegram channels are speculating that military commander of PMC Wagner Dmitriy Utkin was also on the board of the "crashed" plane. https://twitter.com/echofm_online/status/1694390751839314029
What took Putin so long? he’s really slipping.. Maybe waiting to also take out his 2IC in the same terrible accident.. Who’s going to take over the Wagner mercenaries now? What’s going to happen in Africa where Wagner is the proxy military wing of Putin to rape their resources and keep the west out? And keep up their tradition of murderous atrocities and actual rape? Interesting times..
Perhaps finding solutions to those questions are what took him so long. Maybe dispersing Wagner and ensuring there is no strenght within the group for a backlash was the priority before wielding the sword
Wouldn't surprise me if he faked his death to avoid the inevitable actual death that was probably heading his way anyway.
