“So that’s why people are literally cut off, all of a sudden, by these things. You don’t have many burns. You have no blast wounds. It’s just a nasty, bloody fragmentation.”
What are cluster munitions?
Cluster munitions contain multiple explosives that are dropped in an area the size of several football fields. They can be launched from an airplane, from the ground or from the sea.
- Submunitions are released in flight and drop to the ground. They can range from tens to many hundreds;
- They are designed to explode on impact, but up to a third do not, and remain a deadly hazard to civilians for years to come;
- 94% of registered cluster bomb victims are civilians, of which nearly 40% are children.
Cluster bombs are prohibited by an international treaty — the 2010 Convention on Cluster Munitions — which prohibits the use, transfer, production and stockpiling of the weapons.
The treaty cites the failure of many submunitions to explode on impact, leaving dangerous munitions in fields and urban areas that can kill or maim people. Russia, Ukraine, the United States and Israel are among the countries that are not signatories to the treaty.
But an attack of any kind that targets civilians indiscriminately, such as the on-the-spot investigation by the CNN revealed that it happened on February 27 and 28, appears to be a war crime, according to several experts interviewed.
“Extrajudicial killings and bombing of the civilian population, which is neither a military necessity nor proportionate to the threat they are facing, is against the Geneva Conventions,” said Philip Wasielewski, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
“And, based on the Geneva Conventions standard of command responsibility, the general (Zhuravlyov) is guilty, as is everyone else in his line of command.”
‘The wounds are the same’
A doctor who treated war wounded in both conflicts was struck by the similarities. People arrived at the Kharkiv hospital scarred by shrapnel, skin and muscle damage, amputations, open fractures and head trauma.
Syrian-American orthopedic surgeon Samer Attar, who worked in Aleppo as General Zhuravlyov’s forces besieged the city, traveled to Ukraine from his hometown of Chicago in hopes of helping Ukrainian doctors deal with the unknown wave of injuries from war traumatized.
Attar described the wounds he treated in Kharkiv and the ones he saw in Aleppo in 2016 as “the same”.
“You can hear the air raid sirens, but everyone here has learned to stand their ground and move forward,” he said. “I never stop outside and neither does work”.
In December 2016, rebels who had been hiding in eastern Aleppo finally surrendered and the Syrian government and Russian forces retook the territory.
With the battle in Aleppo over, Zhuravlyov left command of the Russian military in Syria and returned to Russia. He was awarded the highest honors bestowed on a Russian officer — the Hero of the Russian Federation.
He was promoted twice the following year and became commander of the Western Military District — the same division that caused death and destruction in Kharkiv and other parts of Ukraine — shortly after his third stint in Syria in 2018.
“The results achieved by Zhuravlyov in Syria were exactly what the Russians wanted, hence his reward with the top medal and the highest positions one can obtain,” said Russian military expert Wasielewski. “It’s what Napoleon said: ‘the reward of a general is not a bigger tent, but a bigger command’.”
Zhuravlyov later said in an interview that Syria had taught him the value of “military ingenuity” and that lessons learned there were being integrated as an “organic component” of all Russian military training.
Another Russian general who served in Syria alongside Zhuravlyov — Lieutenant General Aleksei Zavizion — was appointed Zhuravlyov’s deputy in the Western Military District the same month Zhuravlyov assumed his current position. Just a year earlier, Zavizion reportedly led a group of separatist fighters after they took territory from Ukrainian government forces in the country’s far eastern Donbass region, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence.
Ukraine’s military intelligence also accuses Zavizion of being behind the multiple rocket launch system (MLRS) attacks on civilian areas in the Donbass region. In 2017, Ukraine indicted Zavizion for alleged war crimes.
THE CNN checked his findings on the two Russian generals with Ukrainian military intelligence, which confirmed that they accused the men of being responsible for apparent crimes against civilians in Kharkiv and elsewhere.
Zhuravlyov and Zavizion have not been sanctioned by the international community.
“Colonel General Alexander Zhuravlyov should have been punished for his actions in Syria,” said Matthew Ingham, lead human rights attorney at Payne Hicks Beach law firm.
“It’s a pity that there wasn’t a stronger response to the alleged war crimes at that stage, because that may have affected Putin’s Ukrainian strategic calculations from the start.”
As the Russian invasion continues into its third month and the offensive in the east of the country intensifies, bombs fall on Kharkiv and much of the city has been evacuated of its inhabitants.
The facades of many apartment buildings were torn off. Residents who remain were taken underground in camps scattered throughout the city’s subway system.
After recovering from the Smerch rocket attack on Feb. 28, Kiriukhina fled Kharkiv, hoping to erase the “horror movie” scenes she had experienced from her mind.
Now, when she is in public, she wears a beret or scarf to hide the scars from her head wounds.
“I was in a good mood. The weather was pleasant. The sun was shining. No one would have thought that such a horror would strike in just a few seconds,” she said.
“From the bottom of our hearts and souls, we desire punishment for these crimes. Somehow, justice will prevail. But probably not soon.”
How we made this report
THE CNN checked and analyzed social media videos showing multiple explosions lined up with the use of 300mm Smerch cluster munition rockets in Saltivka and other residential areas of Kharkiv. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International obtained photographic evidence of unexploded cluster submunitions geolocated at the site of the attacks.
In one example, a 9N235 submunition had a manufacturing date of 2019, years after Russia stopped selling these weapons to Ukraine, confirming that the attack was launched by Russia.
THE CNN obtained and verified the original photo showing this submunition. Its metadata shows that the image was taken by a cellphone on February 28, near the site of one of the Smerch rocket attacks.
A team from CNN at the scene observed impact patterns consistent with the explosion of cluster munitions.
With the help of weapons expert Henry Schlottman, the CNN tracked the rockets to the 79th Rocket Artillery Brigade, based in Belgorod.
Ukraine’s military intelligence corroborated the findings of the CNN .
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
