this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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given how they're practically used it's not particularly likely that cluster munitions are going to disproportionately harm Russians―essentially by design (and not dissimilar to the mining Russia is doing in parts of Ukraine), cluster munitions can't and don't work like that―so i think if you lean on that to justify this that's a pretty weak justification.
Yeah, russian soldiers. Ukraine has shown the utmost constraint when it comes to attacks on russian civilians. russia, on the other hand, has not. In fact, it has done the exact opposite - intentionally attacking civilian or Geneva convention protected targets instead of military ones.
And no, seeing how cluster ammunition is practically used, russian civilians are not going to disproportionately harmed. It's going to be military targets which will be fucked up.
unless you have data i don't, the article seems to pretty definitively refute this point. overwhelmingly the people impacted by cluster munition use are civilians (97% of casualties were civilians in 2021) both in and outside of Ukraine, and their usage has a very long tail of fatalities.[^1] there is no reason to think that even if they're tailored specifically to nebulous military use against Russian soldiers that won't also be the outcome here, because it is literally everywhere else they get used.
[^1]: Vietnam and Cambodia are the poster children for this: the countries still have have dozens of civilian fatalities a year from cluster bombing ordinance, and it's been 48 years since the Vietnam War ended.
From your linked pdf:
So to summarize:
Considering that Russia has an extremely well-documented history of specifically targeting civilians, regardless of munitions type, this seems like more of a Russia problem than a cluster bomb problem (at least to the point that it renders these specific statistics moot in a discussion about the general risks of cluster munitions, when used by militaries that are not as barbarous and murderous as the Russian military)