Numerous reports from international human rights organizations prove that since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has regularly deployed cluster bombs against Ukrainian civilians and Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. One such cluster munitions attack was the April 8, 2022, Russian missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station, which killed at least 58 civilians and injured some 100 people.
Responding to the US decision to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs, the Russian leadership and the Kremlin media have been busy spewing out disinformation claiming the Russian military has never used cluster bombs in its war against Ukraine. They claim that even during periods when the Russian military experienced a shortage of supplies, they never resorted to using cluster bombs. “If they are used against us, we reserve the right to answer in kind,” Russian president Vladimir Putin said, speaking to propagandist Pavel Zarubin on Russia 1 state television channel program Moscow. Kremlin. Putin.
This claim is a cynical lie. Since the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops have regularly used cluster bombs against Ukraine’s civilian population, something which is prohibited by international conventions.
The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch points out that international humanitarian law requires parties to a conflict to adhere to the rule of distinction – that is, parties must distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives. Using cluster munitions where civilians may be present violates this rule. Human Rights Watch researcher Bonnie Docherty explains that cluster bombs threaten civilians for two reasons: cluster bomblets spread over a large area and cannot distinguish soldiers from civilians, and many do not explode on impact. They become landmines, threatening civilians for months, years or even decades after the conflict has ended.
Ukrainian military expert Oleh Zhdanov and Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) researcher Kyrylo Mikhailov told Radio Liberty Ukrainian Service that the Russian army has used every type of cluster weapon that exists in its war against Ukraine, launching them through its Hurricane, Smerch and Tornado-S rocket launch systems.
Already in the first week of Russia’s full-scale invasion, from February 24 to March 5, 2022, Truth Hounds, an NGO that documents and investigates war crimes, after analyzing photographs and videos of unexploded shells and their remnants from impact sites and affected areas, concluded that the Russian military used non-conventional weapons of indiscriminate action against several Ukrainian cities. Their analysis showed that most often shells of the BM-30 Smerch MLRS hit their civilian targets.
Moreover, at the beginning of March 2022, Russia used aircraft cluster bombs with PTAB-1M cluster submunition elements in the Odesa region. These high destructive capacity submunitions are parts of anti-tank aviation bombs aimed at destroying heavy military equipment. The video, released by Ukraine’s Odesa Region State Emergency Service, shows 253 submunition units found at the Bilenke and Zaliv settlements, where the bombs detonated. “Such large numbers of unexploded cluster elements is another sign of the high danger of this type of weapon for the civilian population. Cluster bomb unexploded submunitions can remain undetected at the crash site for a long time and explode at any time later,” says EditSign in the Truth Hounds report.
Amnesty International’s June 13 report Anyone Can Die At Any Time: Indiscriminate Attacks by Russian Forces in Kharkiv, Ukraine, notes that hundreds of civilians died in Kharkiv as a result of the Russian army using cluster bombs. Amnesty International has documented at least 28 indiscriminate Russian air strikes on Kharkiv. One such attack, killed three civilians, one of them a child. The organization has found evidence confirming that on the morning of February 25, a 220-millimeter Russian Uragan system missile dropped cluster bombs on the Sonechko kindergarten in the city of Okhtyrka, Sumy region, where civilians were hiding. According to Amnesty International, the attack could be classified as a war crime.
At the end of March 2022, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachalet, stated that according to credible reports, Russia used cluster munitions at least 24 times in a single month since they invaded Ukraine.
On July 21, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Ukraine was already using American cluster munitions on the battlefield “correctly and effectively.” The day before, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that Ukraine would use US supplied cluster bombs to destroy only military targets and only in territories temporarily occupied by Russia.
StopFake journalists analyzed in detail the April 8, 2022 Russian cluster bomb attack on the train station in Kramatorsk, which killed at least 58 civilians and injured more than 100 civilians. For more details about this, see the articles “Fake: Ukrainian military attacked Kramatorsk railway station”, “Fake: Serial Number Confirms Kramatorsk Train Station Hit by Ukrainian Tochka U Missile”, “Fake: BBC video “proves” that Kramatorsk was shelled by the Ukrainian army”.
