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The Polish prime minister has said the government is preparing to introduce “military training” for all adult males in the country and that the initiative should be ready “by the end of the year”. Donald Tusk told parliament on Friday that if Russia took control of parts of Ukraine, then Poland would find itself in a “difficult geographical situation”. He said: “We are preparing large-scale military training for every adult man in Poland. Our goal is to finalize the plan by year’s end to ensure a well-trained reserve force ready for potential threats. “If Ukraine loses the war, or if...

Lithuania announced on Thursday that it has withdrawn from an international convention banning the use of cluster bombs. The formerly Soviet-ruled Baltic state of 2.8 million people has also signalled its intention to leave another international treaty prohibiting the use of anti-personnel land mines, News.Az reports, citing AFP. NATO member Lithuania has said it wants to strengthen its defences following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, fearing it could be next if Moscow succeeds. The Lithuanian parliament voted to leave the cluster munitions convention last July, but the cvountry had to wait six months after submitting exit documents to the UN for...

Donetsk city center came under “a massive chaotic attack” on Tuesday with plumes of smoke seen for miles as Ukrainian shelling hit densely populated areas during peak hours.Acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin said that 169 munitions had been launched including rocket and canon artillery fire with NATO-supplied munitions.The city was pounded for most of the day, with explosions heard from 11 am. Four people were wounded over the course of the day, although the state of their injuries is unknown at this stage.Once again it was civilian areas that bore the brunt of the Ukrainian barrage...

A Russian war reporter was killed and three were wounded in Ukraine on Saturday in what the defence ministry said was a Ukrainian attack using cluster munitions, prompting outrage from Moscow. In a separate incident, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle said one of its journalists, Yevgeny Shilko, had been wounded elsewhere in Ukraine in a Russian attack with cluster munitions that killed a Ukrainian soldier. It said his life was not in danger. Cluster bombs are in the spotlight after Ukraine received supplies of them from the United States this month. Many countries ban them because they rain shrapnel over a...

During an interview with CNN aired on Thursday’s “Situation Room,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he “won’t speculate as to how long” the U.S. will have to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions while it works to replenish stocks of the munitions Ukraine needs. He also stated that “We have what we need, and we’ll continue to have what we need to support our plans in the United States of America.” Austin said, “[W]hat we did early on was we engaged our industrial base and asked them to expand their capacity, and also the international industrial base, we’ve worked with...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked President Biden Wednesday on the sidelines of the NATO summit for providing his country with cluster bombs, highly controversial munitions that are outlawed by more than 100 nations. Zelensky acknowledged it was a “difficult political decision” for Biden to move forward on providing the weapons, which make an explosive more dangerous by indiscriminately dispersing hundreds of projectiles over a larger area. “It’s very simple, you know, to criticize, for example, cluster munitions, and you made a difficult political decision,” Zelensky told Biden as the pair appeared together in Vilnius, Lithuania, amid the NATO summit.

US President Joe Biden has reportedly made the decision to provide cluster bombs to Ukraine's armed forces to enable troops to target well-entrenched Russian forces on the front lines. The US administration is expected to formally announce this action on Friday (July 7) as part of a new military aid package valued at $800million.

PROGRESS WATCH   Two decades after a landmark treaty, and despite an overall increase due largely to Syria’s civil war, the majority of affected countries recorded fewer deaths linked to land mines and cluster munitions. In January 1997, Diana, princess of Wales, famously walked through an active minefield in Angola to raise awareness of the ongoing threats posed by land mines. During her visit, with the help of a removal expert, Diana detonated one of the remaining mines. “One down, 17 million to go,” she said while pushing the button. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the death of...

The papacy may or may not have tried to ban the crossbow. But the Second Lateran Council (1139) certainly disparaged the “murderous art of crossbowmen and archers” when their weapons were directed against Christians. The dismayed council decided to prohibit their use on Christians “from now on.” Alas, perpetuity proved to be short-lived. Likewise, naval arms limitations treaties after World War One failed to stop naval warfare in World War Two. As naval-history.net notes, in 1936 Hitler’s Germany “agreed to prohibit unrestricted submarine warfare against unarmed ships.” Yes, in 1936 Hitler claimed -disarmingly-that he wanted peace, and legions of appeasers...

LONDON — The draft of a treaty to ban cluster munitions was adopted by a group of 111 nations on Wednesday in Dublin after Britain dropped its longstanding opposition to any limitations on the weapons. The sudden shift by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is under pressure to combat his Labor Party’s declining political fortunes, created fresh pressures on the United States, which had counted Britain as one of its staunchest allies in opposing the ban. The treaty, hammered out in two weeks of talks in Dublin, had been under negotiation since February 2007. The nations accepting the treaty are...