Russia increasingly targets Ukraine's cities with cluster munitions, raising civilian toll
Russia increasingly targets Ukraine's cities with cluster munitions, raising civilian toll
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"The vast majority of cluster munitions that are being used in the world today are being used by Russia in Ukraine," said Mary Wareham, deputy director of the Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch.
Their use "is an element of Moscow’s broader policy of terror against the Ukrainian people," Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said on June 26.
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Ukrainian authorities have documented at least 5,974 cases of Russia’s cluster munitions use in Ukraine since 2022, the Foreign Ministry said.
When such attacks are launched on big cities, like Russia’s strike on Kyiv on June 17 that killed 30 and injured 172 people, they stand out for the number of civilian casualties inflicted. According to Wareham, videos from the attack site suggest the use of cluster munitions delivered by a cruise missile.
Ukrainian authorities said that Russia also used cluster munitions in a strike on a playground in Kryvyi Rih on April 4, killing 20 people, including nine children, in the deadliest single attack on Ukrainian children verified by the UN since the start of the full-scale invasion.
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In another attack, two ballistic missiles struck the center of Sumy minutes apart on Sunday afternoon of April 13, during a religious holiday. Thirty-five people were killed and 117 injured, "mainly civilians who were walking on the street or traveling on a bus, and people attempting to help the victims of the first strike," the UN report said.
Other deadly strikes on civilians with cluster munitions were reported by local Ukrainian authorities in the past few months, including the attack on Kharkiv on April 18, Chuhuiv in Kharkiv Oblast on May 23, a village in Sumy Oblast on May 26, and a UN-documented attack in Dobropillia that killed 11 people and injured 48 on March 7.
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[The cluster munition's] most common use is in artillery rounds, but they can also be carried in ballistic and cruise missiles that Russia routinely launches on Ukrainian cities, along with hundreds of drones.
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Cluster munitions indiscriminately kill or maim civilians caught in wide areas of impact at the time of the attack, experts say. A large percentage of bomblets also fail to detonate after scattering and could claim people’s lives decades after active fighting ends.
An international treaty called the Convention on Cluster Munitions was established in 2008 with the aim of moving the world away from their use. Since then, 124 countries have signed the treaty, but in 2024, Lithuania withdrew from it, citing the threat from Russia's use of cluster munitions in a potential war with NATO. Neither Russia nor Ukraine nor the U.S. are signatories.
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"Cluster munitions just cross a really big line, and should never be used by any actor under any circumstances, in a city or anywhere else," Wareham said.