Russia’s relentless bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, since the Russian invasion began on February 24, has left 600 people dead and more than twice as injured. Many of them are victims of the impact of cluster or fragmentation bombs, as well as “dispersible” munitions, which by their nature have little precision to hit specific targets and are prohibited by international humanitarian law.
The indiscriminate use of this type of weapon by Russian troops in Ukraine has been widely denounced by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (AI), but the report published by the latter organization on Monday is one of the investigations deepest that have been carried out to document its use this war.
AI claims to have found evidence showing that in seven attacks on neighborhoods in this town in northeastern Ukraine, located in the Donbass region and a few kilometers from the Russian border, Russian forces have used 9N210/9N235 cluster bombs, as well as ammunition scattering, i.e. rockets that expel smaller mines over a large area that later explode at timed intervals.
In its report, Anyone can die at any time, the organization documents through interviews with survivors and experts on the ground as many as 41 attacks in Kharkiv, which killed at least 62 people and injured 196. Unguided bombs fell on homes and on the street: on a group of people queuing for their food ration, on a playground, in front of shops, on a cemetery… “The repeated use of widely banned cluster bombs is shocking and demonstrates a total disregard for civilian lives,” said Donatella Rovera, crisis and conflict researcher at AI headquarters.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are signatories to either the Convention on Cluster Munitions or the Convention on Antipersonnel Mines (as more than a hundred countries have done), but international humanitarian law prohibits attacks and the use of weapons that, for their nature, punish the population indiscriminately and constitute a war crime.
These are missiles, most in this war fired from the ground, which detonate in the air and release a cluster of smaller bombs that fall haphazardly over a wide area, endangering civilians. They can also contain mines that explode later.
Ivan Litvynyenko, 40, recalled for Amnesty the attack that took place on 15 April in a playground next to his house in the Industrialnyi neighbourhood. Several cluster bombs exploded when he was walking with his wife Oksana and his four-year-old daughter. “When my daughter saw her mom on the floor in a pool of blood, she told me, ‘let’s go home; mom is dead and people are dead.’ She was in shock and so was I.” His wife was hospitalized in critical condition until she lost her life last Saturday.
That same day, Tetiana Ahayeva, a 53-year-old nurse, was standing in front of the entrance to her building when several bombs went off. “There was a sudden sound of firecrackers everywhere. I saw puffs of black smoke where the explosions occurred. We dropped to the ground and tried to cover ourselves. Our neighbor’s son, a 16-year-old boy, was killed instantly,” he said. Her 18-year-old son received several blows to his abdomen, the doctor showed AI two of the metal pellets that were removed from his body.
On March 12, Veronika Cherevychko lost her right leg when a Grad rocket exploded in a park outside her home: “I was sitting on a bench when the explosion happened. I remember hearing a whistling sound just before the explosion. I woke up in the hospital, my right leg was gone,” said the 30-year-old mother. Many of the survivors interviewed lost limbs.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second most populous city, has been under heavy bombardment since the first day of the invasion. In late April, Russian forces were forced back by the Ukrainian counter-offensive and are now at a greater distance from the city, which has resulted in a reduction in the intensity of the shelling, although the attacks continue.
