Exclusive: US to send depleted-uranium munitions to Ukraine
Exclusive: US to send depleted-uranium munitions to Ukraine
The use of depleted uranium munitions has been fiercely debated, with opponents like the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons saying there are dangerous health risks from ingesting or inhaling depleted uranium dust, including cancers and birth defects.
Just another piece of evidence that the west never actually cared about Ukraine or people living there. Ukrainians are just a pawn the west is using to try and weaken Russia with zero consideration for the lives of the people living there.
Russia does not need the west to weaken it, comrade, it is perfectly capable of doing that on its own!
Maybe try engaging with reality? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-11/russia-s-war-economy-is-on-course-to-recover-from-sanctions-hit
Ahh wonderful, time for so many future children to be born horribly disfigured via contaminated drinking water. Also don't forget all the booming cancer rates!
Every person involved in making this decision deserves to be buried in an unmarked grave with the weapons they love so much. How many innocent people completely uninvolved with the war are going to grow up suffering the effects of depleted uranium rounds? Another absolutely monstrous decision in a long line of monstrous decisions by the US government.
Yes, we get it, the response to literally every decision you don't like is massacre of the people you don't like
Are you aware of what depleted uranium does to the human body? Innocent people are going to be dealing with the consequences of a decision made by a handful of people across the planet for decades after the war ends. Does poisoning generations of people sound like "defending" Ukrainians to you?
Seeing one thing Hm, this is like every thing
-The Eternal Lib
What do you think should be done with war profiteers that destroy societies for money?
It's a tankie, that's their answer to everything they can't strawman around.
They aren't that dangerous as a weapon of war. The uranium is depleted, as the name suggest. The alternative is heavy metal, which is also dangerous to breathe in. It's war and it sucks for health. Maybe there shouldn't have been an invasion...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7903104/ this shit is still causing birth defects in Iraq. This is Ukraine's future now.
Uranium is a very dangerous heavy metal, it just isn't radioactive.
Ah, yes, a nice hexbear to giggle at on my Sunday evening.
🌽 🌽 🌽
Post your hog
File size requirements made me create this low res monstrosity lmao, also please do replace the Tilted Towers for the Palace of Culture and Sciences for thr more realistic scenario.
bite America in the ass
It won't be America it bites in the ass; they'll be a deadly menace to their neighbors in the West (as I would imagine Russia is going to remain on its toes about armed Ukrainian militias). They've been pretty open about their far right views. Frankly this was actually a brilliant strategy for the government; much like how they turned the Middle East into nations yearning for America's protection, so too will the rest of (Western) Europe now become new clients. As a business strategy it's brilliant, my only question is why European governments and the idiots who vote for them over there actually going along with this; you're watching the car careening towards the cliff, why are you cheering the guy pushing it from behind rather than slamming on the brakes.
Even the Taliban didn't commit 9/11 until the US had already been engaged in military actions in Afghanistan for years by that point. War profiteering is the point.
dropping a bunch of depleted uranium around seems a lot like the actions of a state that couldn't give less of a shit about the wellbeing of the people living there
OP is known tankie just fyi. Doesn't justify US or Ukrainian actions but make sure you understand that the reason for posting this isn't out of any actual concern for human beings. They're also peddling covid conspiracies
They posted a Reuters article
Is that an evil tankie propaganda website now?
Ah but they posted the Reuters article maliciously. In a scheming, tankie sort of way.
peddling covid conspiracies
like what?
OP is known tankie just fyi.
Hilarious.
So let me get this straight, according to you:
The people that don't support either side of the war and want to end it as fast as possible through peace talks are evil tankies.
And the bloodthirsty monsters that want to prolong a pointless war, arm Azov Nazis and kill as many people as possible with illegal inhumane weapons that scar generations are freedom-loving liberals.
Seems like the tankies are the more reasonable ones in this situation.
That's an interesting point, but have you considered Harry Potter?
So you neither support the rapist nor the victim. How enlightened centrist of you.
want to end it as fast as possible through peace talks are evil tankies.
Surrender == the end of Ukraine. There's 0% chance of Russia honouring it for any meaningful length of time. They'll see it as a weakness of Ukraine and they'll just build up their forces again and attack. Any legitimate peace deal HAS to have the condition of Russia pulling out of all Ukrainian territory otherwise it'll completely legitimise nations to start wars to take land for themselves. Russia loses nothing by withdrawing. And you 100% know this, which is why tankies keep peddling it - they can claim to be on the moral high ground by saying "we want peace! everyone else are bloodthirsty monsters!" but in reality they know it'll just lead to more violence and genocide. Imagine calling the Allies blood thirsty monsters in WWII because they didn't accept a peace deal with Nazi Germany because they wanted it to end as fast as possible.
Nobody wants bloodshed. Ukraine didn't ask for this war. But they're not going to give up and let Russia get away with a land grab.
Seems like the tankies are the more reasonable ones in this situation.
If by reasonable that you want Russia to win this war then yeah, sure.
The people that don't support either side of the war
They (and you) are clearly supporting Russia.
Something like Stalinist communists. Usually used for non-Russians, but for some reason they love Russian imperialism.
Luckily, the uranium dust is only a problem if the Ukrainian tanks actually get in sight of the Russians.
Turns out UK managed to develop stealth tanks and didn't tell anybody.
No one found out, stealthy
Using depleted uranium rounds on your own territory seems bad. Especially since ukraine is a major exporter of grain.
Then again , shooting a gun inside is stupid, until someone is breaking in and trying to kill you.
According to the article, studies in places where the ammunition has been used "indicated that the existence of depleted uranium residues dispersed in the environment does not pose a radiological hazard to the population of the affected regions."
What effect does it have on the grain?
Does not compute. Why should depleted uranium have any effect on grain production. Its strong radioactive components are, as the name says, depleted. The only worry is inhalation immediately following impact.
I think there's way too much misinformation about this and way too many people talking without a clue
If there's one country to trust with nuclear safety it's actually Ukraine. Capable engineers and scientists, understanding of institutional failure, and certainly not least memory of Chernobyl.
Why though? Can't imagine that these rounds are going to change the course of the war, so why? Are they out of non-Uranium ones?
Because of the uranium bullets are denser and heavier than the lead bullets and you can use the uranium bullets on certain types of aircraft and other weapons systems to shred through medium to heavy armor that could not be penetrated with a lead bullet. TLDR this will be used as a force multiplier.
They are harder and penetrate armour better. So yes they will provide an advantage.
The sooner Russian occupiers are no longer murdering Ukrainians and dropping mines over every square meter of land, the less harm comes to Ukrainians.
Russian forced are mechanized and entrenched, depleted uranium self sharpens on impact, yielding far better armor penetration than previous technologies.
And more generational cancer
No individual measure aside from troops on the ground or nukes is going to change the course of the war by itself.
The ammunition is very effective at punching through the armor. But the Ukrainians will be fucked when in 5 years Leukemia in children is skyrocketing
Ammo is ammo. It's better than hurling stones.
I'm sure Ukrainian soldiers on the front line are worried about cancer and birth defects.
It's not about them. It's the children who find the spent ammo later.
This crap is the reason that there are birth defects spikes anywhere the US military operates.
Ok but the alternatives are not environmentally conscious either, finally the people who’s land it is should be the ones making choices about the conditions of that land
Is ammo made from lead that much better? I honestly don't know. Sure the radiation sucks but Uranium, at least the isotope they're sending is "barely" radioactive. It's the same Uranium people had in their plates etc. The toxicity is probably the far more relevant factor but I don't know how Uranium compares to lead.
This makes sense.
I imagine there's a lot more reasons for birth defect spikes post US mil ops in addition to this. The military isn't exactly an environmentally conscious operation. ☠️
The amount of Ukrainians dying right now will pale in comparison to those effected by the munitions.
The controversy around depleted uranium rounds is way overblown.
Even in Iraq the evidence is super inconclusive. And yes birth defects rose however the entire country basically collapsed for years and nothing clearly indicates it was the DU used.
Don't get me wrong, it's nasty stuff. But this is war, more people are getting killed by bombs then any DU related cancer can cause.
Yes, Ukrainian soldiers on front line are worried about cancer and birth defects. They are rational human beings who hope to return to their homes and live long lives and grow healthy children, not some subhumans with only intent to kill, kill, kill, as you wish to think.
I don't know how rational this is. Given how many soldiers have died so far, if I were a Ukrainian sent to fight on the front line, I wouldn't expect to be coming back. Rather I'd hope that I contribute to the defeat of the enemy, so that my children or my comrades children don't grow up under Russian rule. I'm not in their shoes of course. There's no universal motivation so maybe what you say is more prevalent. That said, this war might not end without soldiers doing a lot more killing so "kill, kill, kill" might be an appropriate viewpoint.
You will get cancer sooner by staying in the sun on a beach or anywhere.
Oh well... The amount of health risks that these rounds would cause would pale in comparison to the mines that the Orcs have planted everywhere. Anything to drive out the invaders!
Yet more confirmation that the West regards Ukrainians as subhuman, and that they know they're not getting the territory back. Generations of birth defects, the unexploded bombs that cluster bombs leave behind, more and more people being drafted and shoved into a meat grinder in a war that's already lost, just so some American ghouls can make a bit of extra cash off their Raytheon stocks.
None of this was worth it. But it's going to keep happening. The US will keep arming Nazis and pushing war over diplomacy and destabilizing everything until something is done to get rid of those bastard war profiteers and the ghouls who lied us into Iraq and Afghanistan.
This shit's so fucking stupid. Can't wait for the chickenhawks to call me a bad person while sitting behind their keyboards demanding others be forced to fight in their stead.
Again?
UK did it last time. But yeah, same shit under a different name.
I'm just glad that as an Adult in the room, I'm on the right side of history. Arming Ukranian Nazis with depleted uranium is actually the least evil option and anyone who doesn't understand that is a child.
Another 50 billion for the cause!
The 500k homeless people in the US humbly accept and understand.
The amount of ruscist sympathisers in this thread is depressing. Are depleted uranium munitions fucked up? Yeah and they shouldn't be used. But that isn't an excuse to bootlick a fascist invader that is already performing ethnic cleansing on territories they took last year
Yeah, I use threads like these to block users. Can't wait for lemmy to implement user level instance blocking like mastodon has.
Edit: don't downvote me, tell me what issue you have with this.
I have no issue with your blocklist (and not gonna downvote your comment), but i still have to say that your position is pretty strange. Why at all join lemmy.ml which is known as real Babel tower with wide range of different opinions without any of them being dominant or enforced (and that differs .ml from .world, beehaw, hexbear, lemmygrad and so on)? If you need echo chamber, you can join other instance or get back to reddit, no reason to wait someone to code some functions.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The rounds, which could help destroy Russian tanks, are part of a new military aid package for Ukraine set to be unveiled in the next week.
The munitions can be fired from U.S. Abrams tanks that, according to a person familiar with the matter, are expected be delivered to Ukraine in the coming weeks.
It follows an earlier decision by the Biden administration to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite concerns over the dangers such weapons pose to civilians.
The United States used depleted uranium munitions in massive quantities in the 1990 and 2003 Gulf Wars and the NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia in 1999.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says that studies in former Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Iraq and Lebanon "indicated that the existence of depleted uranium residues dispersed in the environment does not pose a radiological hazard to the population of the affected regions."
Parts of the country are already strewn with unexploded ordnance from cluster bombs and other munitions and hundreds of thousands of anti-personnel mines.
The original article contains 499 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Seems a little strange considering their refusal to provide M1 Abrams tanks from their stockpile as these have depleted uranium armor.
Maybe there are way more secrets in making armor with depleted uranium (and certainly other things layered in) than just shaping a shell with it?
They'll receive their first 14 M1A1 by Sept. 25. I don't think any foreign countries get the reactive armor except for the US.
The UK.
And you know how the Vietnam war ended, right?
There was a peace agreement between the north and the south, and then a few years later North Vietnam broke it and invaded again, taking over all of the country.
From what I've read depleted uranium is not proven to cause cancer, nor is it not proven (With the exception that you inhale it or eat it).
In Iraq it's still up to debate if it causes cancer or birth defects, since burning buildings and other burning stuff also causes a lot of nasty things to humans.
From what I've read they were also used in Bosnia, and they haven't had similiar effects to Iraq.
So let the Ukrainians have their depleted uranium.
The problem with depleted uranium isn't that it is poison to touch, but that it dissolves into the dirt and dust and poisons everything because people will, in fact, be breathing it in as an aerosol and drinking what gets in the water supply.
radiation asside it's a highly toxic heavy metal yes it will cause health defects
So what's the difference between lead, tungsten, and depleted uranium? They all cause cancer and other symptoms, and both tungsten and depleted uranium must be decontaminated if the tank carrying them is destroyed.
And from what I've read you will die of the toxicity before you will die of the radiation.
the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons saying there are dangerous health risks from ingesting or inhaling depleted uranium dust
Literacy rates in capitalist nations continue to plummet.
But I said that in my original comment, didn't I? Maybe I just said it a but unclearly, since English isn't my first language, but it's there.
Here's the part I mentioned it.
With the exception that you inhale it or eat it
If only the world were so simple that we could trust the organization tasked with banning the substance rather than reading primary sources.
I agree that depleted uranium shouldn't be used, but your quote from the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons means nothing.
I was just gonna say, you're correct, and I'm pretty sure there are WAY more toxic chemicals and debris on a battlefield. Think of all the older structures built with asbestos products being destroyed, for example...
Last I read, alot of the effects Vets ended up with from Iraq, were from the immense open pits they burnt their trash in.
Tankies shaking in their boots over that Abrams 120mm DU APFSDS slicing though Russian steel like butter.
It's so easy to trigger tankie bridgades. How many posts yall got about me now? Tagged me in a few!
more concerned about DU slicing through the dna of ukrainian children for years after the war like in Iraq
Bloodthirsty liberal Nazis cheering for generations of genetic deformity to prolong a pointless war between two fascist capitalist forces
Do you think these rounds just magically disappear after they're used? They're going to continue to litter the land and cause generations of people completely uninvolved in the conflict to suffer from birth defects, lung damage, and cancer, as can be seen after its use in Iraq. No one is immune to depleted uranium. At this point you can just admit that you care more about killing Russians than you do defending Ukraine, consequences be damned.
"Orcs"
Ew.
I hope some U238 finds its way into your lungs, fascist scum.
It's only a hazard if you are handling it all the time, or you hang out around old targets where there is a fuck ton of uranium dust just waiting to get stirred up. If it gets in your lungs, you are not going to be a happy camper after a few years. Even so, depleted uranium emits alpha particles which is the weakest form of radiation.
I don't deny the fact that uranium dust is bad. The reasons why it is bad are usually left out of the all the articles that hate on it for the wrong reasons.
Hell, here in Colorado we have more issues with radon. As far as uranium is concerned, there are problems with rainwater runoff concentrating it from the old mines that we have, but that is about it. Of course that isn't good, but it takes massive tailings piles from old mines to cause issues for groundwater and such.
As a German, thank you. Meanwhile we're still dragging our feet with the TAURUS, sigh.
Depleted utanium is a war crime
Depleted utanium is a war crime
Actually, it's not. Quoted from the British article about the DU rounds they're shipping for the Challenger 2s:
The UK MoD insists that the depleted uranium shells it is sending to Ukraine are not prohibited by any international agreement.
It says that under Article 36 of the First Protocol of 1977 Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the UK's depleted uranium shells are "capable of being used lawfully in international armed conflict".
President Vladimir Putin has warned that if the UK does send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, "Russia will have to respond accordingly, given that the West collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component".
The MoD replied in a statement: "The British Army has used depleted uranium in its armour-piercing shells for decades. Russia knows this, but is deliberately trying to disinform."
Stating the use of DU is a war crime is just Russian mouthpieces repeating Kremlin lies.
Recharged utanium, however, is a war benevolence
Saying things are war crimes doesn't make it so! Also Anti-Flag sucks.
Whatever munition you choose, it will lead to heavy metal poisoning.
Pun intended?
depleted uranium is much worse than conventional ammo.
Being invaded is worse.
The quickest way to save the most amount of lives is whatever gets rid rid of Russia the quickest.
No question.
Depleted Uranium is hardly dangerous.
Another booby trapped mine with a grenade underneath gets placed by Russians every 4 minutes.
Another Ukrainian citizen is tortured.
And now there are reports of Ukrainian children being tortured.
Bring on the napalm.
It's not.
Whatever water you drink, it will lead to heavy metal poisoning (eventually).
Whatever music you listen to, it will lead to heavy metal poisoning. Or to malmusicion.
Not sure if dad joke.