Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US envoy to the United Nations, said Vladimir Putin’s forces were prepared to use “exceptionally lethal weaponry” to achieve their military objectives.
Addressing the UN, Ms Thomas-Greenfield compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the beginning of the Second World War.
“If the UN has any purpose, it is to prevent war, to condemn war, to end war,” she added.
[...]
While vacuum bombs are those that are 100% fuel and explode into a high-temperature, high-impact combustion with surrounding oxygen, cluster bombs are those which contain multiple submunitions which open mid-air and explode on impact.
Weapons systems delivering clusters of explosive submunitions are collectively known as cluster munitions and can deliver hundreds or thousands of submunitions in a single attack, so are often favoured in large-scale military operations seeking to destroy widespread territory over single, targeted munition attacks.
They can be delivered by missiles and ground artillery, but are also dropped from planes onto generic targeted areas or terrain.
In contrast to vacuum bombs, which are considered useful in targeting harder to reach ground operations and military sites, cluster bombs are often deployed to take out military personnel across large sections of battlefields.
www.scotsman.com/...
The decision to send arms, 135,000 field rations, 5,000 helmets, and 5,000 pieces of body armor is the first time Sweden has sent weapons to a country in armed conflict since the Soviet Union attacked Finland in 1939
1. Some background: Russian
#VDV Airborne
#Spetsnaz commander Dmitry Utkin adopted the callsign "Wagner" in the first Russian incursion in
#Donbas in 2014, a triple entendre indicating his position as "conductor" of off-book scouts and saboteurs now known as the
#WagnerGroup.
2. Much has been made of Wagner's affiliation with neo-Nazi movements in
#Russia. But the cultural weave of Russian mercenaries is more nuanced.
"Wagner" also refers to the German composer's valorization during the
#ThirdReich by Adolf Hitler & Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
3. References to
#musicians or
#музыканты among the so-called
#Wagnerovtsy or
#вагнеровцы also ties to the German composer's famous "Ride of the Valkyries," a musical drama from the opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen," which draws on the Poetic Edda tradition of the Nordic Vikings.
4. Another notable link is that Nazi Quarter-Master General Eduard Wagner authored the orders that called for the Nazi Einsatzgruppen to co-operate in murdering Soviet Jews
6. Back to yesterday's recruitment call on a
#Wagner-linked Telegram channel: An associated Telegram channel reposted it and received some 300 comments.
One commenter refers to "another orchestra from Siberia that is playing there."
7. Another comment mentions Molkino, a town in Russia's Krasnodar district that serves as a joint training center for PMSC contingents like Wagner.
Read more in our report Decoding the Wagner Group:
newamerica.org/international-…
8. One commenter says he is in the area and may apply, while several others ask where and how they can do so.
9. Several commenters chip in to clarify the barely concealed meaning of the post and explain that interested applicants might reach out to active "musicians" to learn more.
10. Others ask about the salary and receive a variety of estimates, possibly including a death payout ("God forbid") of 5 million rubles, equal to roughly $45,000 today.
11. A taste of the rhetoric that flourishes in these spaces: "ISIS Hunters [a Wagner-linked contingent that operated in Syria] begins the hunt for the black degenerates who decided to step foot in Ukraine."
12. There's much more to say, but one other key reference among so-called "Wagner musicians" is their love of the war classic
#ApocalypseNow.
One commenter quotes a line from the movie's famous Ride of the Valkyries scene: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
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