Sir, – Your editorial “The Irish Times view on the Ukraine counteroffensive: slow progress raises questions” (August 21st) hints at the scale and horror of the Russian Ukraine war but offers little hope for a cessation of the bloodbath. If the quoted estimates by US officials are accurate this means that, on average, over 6,400 Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded every week since the war began 78 weeks ago.
If this “war of attrition” as you rightly term it lasts “well into next year” – say another 40 weeks – and the killing spree continues at this pace, then a further 256,000 soldiers on both sides will have been either killed or horribly maimed.
Such estimates do not even consider the devastating toll on civilians and the environment.
Any claim that flooding Ukraine with sophisticated weaponry has helped the Ukrainians has to be offset by the fact that the war reached a bloody stalemate many months ago with little movement of the front line but with an obscene scale of human slaughter not unlike the first World War.
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The addition of cluster munitions is more than “controversial”, since they are banned by so many countries and their impact will cause loss of civilian lives for decades to come.
The mirage of the F-16s touted by many western militarists will likely only add to the carnage on both sides.
In this context alone, notwithstanding the clear breach of Ireland’s neutrality, it beggars belief that Micheál Martin has joined this militaristic frenzy by offering Irish expertise in weapon training when he should instead be joining the international call for a ceasefire and peace negotiations. – Yours, etc,
JIM ROCHE,
Public Relation Officer,
Steering Committee,
Irish Anti-War Movement,
Dublin 1.