Ukraine uses cluster bombs on its own territory to retake eastern town: New York Times
Virtually banned around the world, but 'they needed to use them to retake their country, no matter the cost'
Author of the article:
Shari Kulha
Publishing date:
Apr 19, 2022 •
A Ukrainian tank drives next to a destroyed Russian vehicle, marked with the "Z" symbol, in the village of Husarivka on April 14. PHOTO BY ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS / REUTERS
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Until the war, Husarivka was a village of about 1,100 people, located 100 kilometres southeast of Kharkiv and just several kilometres from the Russian front line near the eastern city of Izium.
Just two weeks after the war began and the town was occupied by Russian troops, hundreds of its residents fled, leaving just 400 to tend to the town and their neighbours’ farms.
The exodus began after a small neighbourhood was hit on March 6 or 7 by a cluster munition rocket that rained down 30 deadly “bomblets.” Russia has been accused of using these repeatedly in Ukraine, but the
New York Timesposits that, in the case of Husarivka, it was Ukraine that fired on its own territory.
Based on evidence reviewed by the Times on a visit to the area, a 220-millimetre Uragan artillery rocket “is very likely to have been launched by the Ukrainian troops who were trying to retake the area,” the paper says. Using a cluster bomb “underscores their strategic calculation: This is what they needed to do to retake their country, no matter the cost.”
Nobody died in that hit, though at least two were killed as Ukrainian forces targeted the Russians over most of the month.
Cluster munitions are almost universally banned — more than 120 countries are signatories to the
Convention on Cluster Munitions, which took effect in 2010, but the United States, Russia and Ukraine are not. It prohibits the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of such weapons, in order to “address the humanitarian consequences and unacceptable harm to civilians.”
So many nations decry the use of cluster bombs not only because they can cause immediate damage and death, and because 20 per cent of them do not detonate on impact, they create potential for further random danger to the innocent.
“It’s not surprising, but it’s definitely dismaying to hear that evidence has emerged indicating that Ukraine may have used cluster munitions in this current conflict,” said Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch, told the Times. “Cluster munitions are unacceptable weapons that are killing and maiming civilians across Ukraine.”
Uragan cluster munitions leave behind the rocket’s nose cone and its long skeletal metal frame that hold the bomblets. The rockets’ warheads — carrying 30 anti-personnel bomblets apiece — would have separated in flight from their solid rocket motors, breaking open and casting the small munitions across a wide swath. Each smaller weapon contains about twice as much TNT as a standard hand grenade, the newspaper says.
Ukrainian soldiers stand outside the abandoned Russian outpost in Husarivka, in Kharkiv region, on April 14, 2022.PHOTO BY ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS / REUTERS
Times reporters say they saw large pieces of the artillery rockets that dispensed the cluster munitions, confirming the type of weapon that had been fired. A truck-mounted launcher kilometres away had aimed for the makeshift Russian headquarters in a farm workshop, residents told the reporters, meaning the Russian forces were almost certainly the target.
Ukrainian forces retook the village around March 26. Husarivka is now attacked daily by both Russian artillery and aircraft, residents told the newspaper.
An adviser to the Ukrainian armed forces and the Ministry of Defence declined to comment to the Times.
On April 8, the Times verified that
a similar kind of Uragan rocket, loaded with anti-vehicle land mines, was fired by Russian troops in a strike against the town of Bezruky, a suburb of Kharkiv.
In 2015, Ukrainian forces used cluster munitions during the opening months of their war against Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east.