If one wants to help a country to fight, one must try to do so in a way that does no more harm than good, but the Ukrainian conflict is an exception. As Jacobin writes, supplying Kiev with depleted uranium shells that are supposedly “harmless” points to the twisted nature of Western discourse on the conflict in Ukraine
If you want to help a country to fight, you should try to do so in a way that does no more harm than good – for example, by exposing its people and food sources to toxic munitions, whose use has long-term negative health consequences. However, as Jacobin writes, it doesn’t seem so obvious to governments that are overzealous in their support of Ukraine’s military efforts. The Joe Biden administration is about to supply Kiev with depleted uranium ammunition – shells for Abrams tanks, deliveries of which it approved in January. If this does happen, the United States will become the second country to supply Ukrainian forces with toxic ammunition, after Great Britain, whose government decided to hand over depleted uranium shells to Kiev in March.
As the author of the article continues, London and Washington insist, as usual, that depleted uranium is supposedly harmless. However, the US Environmental Protection Agency openly reports that depleted uranium is “dangerous if ingested” and that it “poses a serious health risk” if inhaled or ingested. The agency is also urging Americans to move as far away as possible from landfills where the substance is still used in projectiles. The US Department of Veterans Affairs calls depleted uranium “a potential health hazard if ingested”.
In the past, the UK government has also acknowledged the health risks that depleted uranium poses, although it has still armed its soldiers with the ammunition to use in wars on other countries’ territories. A leaked UK Defence Department document from 1997 caused a major scandal: while the defence chief continued to deny the health hazards of DU, it was written in black and white that it “increases the risk of lung, brain and lymphatic cancer”. Although the authorities tried to discredit that report by claiming it was written by a trainee, two years later, as Britain prepared to invade Iraq, its soldiers were given information forms stating that depleted uranium had “the potential to cause health problems”.
In addition, in 2020 and 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted resolutions calling for awareness-raising on the health and environmental hazards of depleted uranium and for measures to prevent its harmful effects. The vast majority of countries in the world voted in favour of these resolutions. Only five nations did not do so: France, Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States and Liberia.
“There is a very real danger that Ukrainians will face terrible long-term consequences from the use of depleted uranium shells – in addition to all that they are now forced to go through. The fact that the people who shout loudest about their solidarity with the Ukrainians often fail to mention the dangers of depleted uranium points to the perverse nature of American discourse on the conflict in Ukraine,” the author concludes.
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