I love my ‘Bulgy’ AK 74. It as dependable and durable as a AK 47. Mine only jammed once and it was fixed by merely loading the magazines with 29 rounds instead of the full 30. It never has jammed since. It’s fairly accurate and it’s high velocity round carries a good punch. It light enough my wife can carry it and she can easily handle the recoil. The ammo when you can get it is cheap enough you can afford to actually take it out and shoot it. This is from an article on Cheaper than Dirt:
The Soviets took the 5.56 NATO and improved upon it by making it even more inclined to yaw. The construction of the 5.45×39 bullet features a steel core with a copper jacket and lead-plugged tail. The jacket forms an air space above the penetrator at the nose, making the round lighter and faster still. This, combined with the lead plug in the tail, made the round very tail heavy and incredibly unstable in soft tissue. Even upon impact the air-gap in the nose remains intact, causing the bullet to violently yaw sideways and rapidly break apart as it passes through tissue. The 5.45 also has a very high cross-sectional density giving it an excellent ballistic co-efficient and hence, aerodynamic stability. The increased cross-sectional density also makes the bullet much better at penetrating kevlar and other body armor than the older 7.62×39 ammunition.
First battle-tested in the Soviet war in Afghanistan – one of the most brutal and bloody wars of our time and certainly one of the most inhospitable of environments to field troops and material – the AK-74 proved it’s merit. Afghans who came up against the AK-74 in the Afghan-Soviet war dubbed the 5.45×39 round the “poison bullet” due to the wound-causing capability of the round. There were rumours that the round might violate the Geneva Convention. Though, since the round was not an explosive, poisoned, or a hollow point round, the greivances were never found to have merit. Similar complaints were made when the 5.56 NATO round was introduced, though neither cartridge was ever found to be in violation of the Geneva Convention.
My understanding is that limitations on bullets come from the Hague Convention, not the Geneva Convention. At that time the Germans had just invented their spitzer pointed bullets and the British had a round nose bullet with the jacket applied by wrapping it around the base. That made the .303 Brit round very very accurate. The Germans wanted to make their round legal and the Brit round illegal, so they seized on the exposed lead as the difference that mattered, and used other rounds (not Brit, as the Brit had high antimony levels so it was definitely not a soft point) to demonstrate the cruel nature of bullets with exposed lead.
Hague Convention also banned bombing cities from the air and sinking passenger ships of any kind, but protected transports by requiring the sinking ship to make provision for all survivors. Of course you may remember how far Germany kept their side of the Hague Convention in WWI....