The United States supplying cluster munitions to the Kiev regime is another step to heightening the crisis, Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said on Thursday.
"That’s another step toward escalating the conflict," Nebenzia said during a press briefing.
Earlier, it was reported that the US may approve the provision of cluster munitions to Ukraine as soon as this week. Under US law, President Joe Biden must sign a presidential waiver to authorize the export of these controversial munitions, which drop bomblets that can endanger civilians for years.
Meanwhile, US-based Human Rights Watch has urged for an end to the use of cluster munitions in the Ukrainian conflict and demanded that the United States reject Kiev's call for more of these indiscriminate weapons on Thursday.
"If the goal of this support is a free Ukraine, where children can grow up in safety and security – where they can run through the fields and forests like children should be able to do everywhere – then using cluster munitions is not the way to get there," Human Rights Watch said.
"The danger is very real. Cluster munitions are weapons delivered by artillery, rockets, missiles, and aircraft that open in mid-air and disperse dozens or hundreds of bomblets over a wide area – like the size of a football field or two. It’s nearly impossible for those firing them to aim for military targets without causing civilian causalities, as well. In short, using them is almost guaranteed to be a war crime."
HRW found that Ukrainian cluster munition rocket attacks in the Russia-controlled city of Izium killed at least eight civilians and injured 15 more in 2022.
The rights group said the total number of civilians injured by these banned weapons was most likely greater. Russian forces took many injured civilians to Russia for medical care and many had not returned when HRW visited. It cited an ambulance driver as saying that civilians, including children, were transported every day to hospitals for treatment for cluster munition injuries.
HRW estimated that the cluster munitions that the US was considering sending to Ukraine were more than 20 years old. It said they "scatter over a wide area, and have a notoriously high failure rate, meaning they could remain deadly for years."
In February, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference asked allies to supply cluster bombs, which are banned in many countries under the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters that Ukraine was not a contracting party to the convention and assumed that such a delivery would be legally possible.