The Russian military's extensive use of cluster munitions in the war in Ukraine has brought about lasting harm and suffering to hundreds of civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on August 25.
In its global Cluster Munition Monitor 2022 report, the New York-based rights group said Ukraine is the only country where such munitions are being employed currently and urged both Russia and Ukraine to stop using them and join the 2008 international treaty banning them.
Russia has used cluster munitions extensively since invading Ukraine on February 24, while Ukrainian forces appear to have used them at least three times in the war, the report said.
Cluster munitions, which can be fired by artillery and rockets or dropped by aircraft, open in the air, spreading numerous bomblets or submunitions over a wide area.
Since many bomblets remain initially unexploded, they can indiscriminately maim and kill military personnel and civilians alike, including children.
A military sapper picks up unexploded parts of a cluster bomb left after Russia's invasion near the village of Motyzhyn in the Kyiv region on April 10.
The report said that at least 689 civilian casualties from cluster munition attacks had been registered in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion through July.
It said that hundreds of Russian cluster munitions attacks have been documented, reported, or alleged in at least 10 of Ukraine’s 24 regions.
Russia has not denied using cluster munitions in Ukraine, saying that it regards them as “a lawful form of munitions” that “are only harmful when misused.”
The report said Ukrainian forces also appear to have used cluster munitions on at least three occasions in locations that were under the control of Russia’s armed forces or affiliated armed groups at the time.
Ukraine has also not denied using cluster munitions in the conflict but said that “the Armed Forces of Ukraine strictly adhere to the norms of international humanitarian law," the report noted.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions that prohibits this type of ammunition and has been ratified so far by 110 countries and signed by 13 more.
“The immediate and long-term suffering that cluster munitions cause civilians make their use today in Ukraine unconscionable as well as invariably unlawful,” said HRW's Mary Wareham.
“Russia’s widespread use of cluster munitions in Ukraine is a sobering reminder of what the convention needs to overcome if it is to succeed in ending the human suffering these indiscriminate weapons cause,” Wareham said, adding, “All countries should condemn the use of these weapons under any circumstances."
The report said an HRW investigation in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, established that Russian forces launched cluster munition rockets whose submunitions struck homes, city streets, and parks, as well as an outpatient clinic at a maternity hospital and a cultural center in May and June.
A May 12 attack on the nearby town of Derhachi instantly killed a woman cooking in her garden and severed her husband's legs, causing his subsequent death.
A wall bears the mark of cluster shelling in a residential area of Kharkiv on May 23.
The notable decline in new cluster munition casualties over the past years has been eclipsed by their new use in Ukraine since the start of Russia's invasion in February, the HRW report found.
Russia has used in Ukraine both old cluster munition stocks and newly produced ones, the report said.
On the other hand, HRW said it did not find proof that cluster munitions have been transferred among the artillery, rocket systems, and other weapons that the Ukrainian government has received from other countries this year.
The United States last produced cluster munitions in 2016, the report says, but has not joined the international ban or committed to never producing them in the future.
The report also singled out China and Iran as being actively involved in the research and development of new types of cluster munitions.
The report will be presented to countries attending the 10th annual meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions at the United Nations in Geneva on August 30-September 2.
“Governments that have yet to join the convention should review their position and join with others helping to rid the world of cluster munitions,” HRW's Wareham said.