Recently, Human Rights Watch reported that both sides in the war on Ukraine had employed cluster bombs. The story, however, quickly received a curious spin. In an article for the New York Times, Andrew Roth headlined that Ukraine alone had employed these weapons.
Unfortunately for Roth, the story was quickly discredited. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers, who number 90 to 100 people in the area, told both Bloomberg and Germany’s Deutsche Welle that none of their observers had witnessed the use of cluster bombs in the fighting.
Yet at the same time, Roth, the Times, and most Western media outlets completely glossed over the findings of retired Gen. Wesley Clark and well-respected defense analyst Phillip Karber. Namely, that Moscow had not only used cluster bombs but also thermobaric weapons – explosives that utilize oxygen from the atmosphere to generate a high-energy explosion – on the Ukrainian battlefield.
In fact, Moscow has used thermobaric weapons before. It did so in Chechnya, during its efforts to pacify the long-running insurgency there. So the current resort to these barbarous weapons is not an exception; rather, it is part and parcel of standard Russian operating practice. Moreover, recent articles in the Russian military press have detailed that Russian soldiers train for chemical and biological warfare contingencies, and that such forces are incorporated into the Russian armed forces, suggesting that Moscow fully intends to wage such warfare if necessary.
Indeed, on Oct. 24, the Washington Post raised the disturbing possibility that Moscow has again resumed the manufacture of biological weapons, despite being a signatory to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. According to the Post, several Russian labs are once again operating, and doing so in near total secrecy much like their Soviet predecessors. Recent articles in the Russian military press have likewise noted that Russian soldiers train for chemical and biological warfare contingencies and that such forces are incorporated into the Russian armed forces, suggesting that Moscow fully intends to wage such warfare if necessary.
Moscow’s seeming readiness to use such lethal weapons, including potentially against civilians, is already on display in Ukraine where, apart from cluster and thermobaric weapons, Russian forces have employed a range of deadly cutting-edge equipment, from mobile mortar platforms to new, longer-range (and more lethal) battlefield munitions. Moreover, Moscow has provided at least some of these systems (such as the Grad and Uragan rocket launchers) to separatist forces active in the east of the country, expanding their military capabilities in the process.
Perhaps not surprisingly, mainstream coverage of events in Ukraine – including by Human Rights Watch – has neglected these details. As a result, the world has somehow managed to overlook the enormous and incontrovertible evidence that this war had long since become an international war with a deliberate planned and multi-stage invasion by Russian regular and irregular troops. In the process, media outlets such as the New York Times have become complicit in ignoring Russian brutality and war crimes while disseminating spurious accusations against Moscow’s victims.
Unfortunately such blaming of the victim, double talk, and double standards are hardly new phenomena. Centuries ago, Martin Luther observed that lies, superstition, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes begging. Today, the falsehoods of the Ukraine war continue to be disseminated with impunity. If they are believed, it will impugn not only the credibility of the news outlets that spread them, but the integrity of the West as well.
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