After eight long months, the Russian military finally retreated from Kherson, Ukraine, in November, lifting residents’ constant fear of torture by occupation forces.
But the Russian invaders have continued to terrorize Kherson by bombing the city from the other side of the Dnieper River.
Between November 11, when Ukrainian forces reclaimed the city, and November 25, a series of attacks killed at least 15 people, including one child, and wounded 35, according to the head of Kherson’s city council, Halyna Luhova.
These attacks have led many civilians to evacuate the city, including patients at Kherson’s Clinical Hospital
Our researchers have now documented in horrifying detail three attacks using cluster bombs specifically.
Cluster munitions are particularly awful because they are inherently indiscriminate. Whether fired from the ground or dropped by aircraft, they open in the air to disperse multiple bomblets over a wide area. There’s no control over where these bomblets go.
What’s more, many of them fail to explode on initial impact, leaving them there to maim and kill anyone who walks by, like landmines, for years.
Using cluster bombs in a populated area is almost certainly in violation of the laws of war because their effects cannot be limited to the military objects they may be targeting, and the deadly impacts on civilians are foreseeable.
In other words, these attacks in Kherson could constitute a war crime.
Add it to a long list of Russia using cluster bombs in other parts of Ukraine. We’ve documented it in Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, and Vuhledar, just to name a few.
All of these attacks are being carried out without any apparent regard for civilian life.