Fol­low­ing up on the claims of an immi­nent false flag nuclear melt­down event at the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant, there was anoth­er remark­able sto­ry over the past cou­ple of days that could intro­duce an alarm­ing new dimen­sion into the ongo­ing nuclear false flag dynam­ics: NBC News is report­ing that secret backchan­nel talks between for­mer US offi­cials and the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment have been under­way since at least April, with a focus on find­ing avenues for arriv­ing at a cease fire and shift­ing the con­flict to a phase of diplo­mat­ic nego­ti­a­tions. We are told that while the White House is not direct­ing the nego­ti­a­tions or active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in them, the White House is nonethe­less aware of them. It’s not clear how fre­quent­ly these meet­ings are hap­pen­ing or what the prospects are for a diplo­mat­ic break­through, but we’re told that they start­ed when Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Lavrov hap­pened to be New York City for a UN meet­ing and met with for­mer diplo­mat Richard Haass, Europe expert Charles Kupchan and Rus­sia expert Thomas Gra­ham. We’re also told there’s been at least one trip by a for­mer US offi­cial to Rus­sia to con­tin­ue those talks.

What did they dis­cuss in terms of diplo­mat­ic approach­es to end­ing the con­flict? We aren’t told, but we do have a clue: Haass and Kupchan also pub­lished a piece in For­eign Affairs back in April, titled “The West Needs a New Strat­e­gy in Ukraine,” pre­dict­ing that a mil­i­tary stale­mate would emerge fol­low­ing the Ukrain­ian counter-offen­sive and call­ing for the cre­ation of a demil­i­ta­rized zone with a neu­tral orga­ni­za­tion, pos­si­bly the UN, act­ing as observers to mon­i­tor and enforce the cease-fire.

So with the Ukrain­ian counter-offen­sive show­ing all indi­ca­tions that it’s not going to achieve some sort of mil­i­tary break­through and the odds of the stale­mate Haass and Kapchan pre­dict­ed mate­ri­al­iz­ing this fall only grow­ing as the sum­mer inch­es clos­er to the fall, it’s not hard to imag­ine that the appetite for some sort of demil­i­ta­rized zone is only going to grow among Ukraine’s allies. And Ukraine knows this. That’s all part of the alarm­ing con­text of the nuclear false flag threat. A threat that, as we’ve seen, would poten­tial­ly trig­ger Arti­cle 5 for NATO if NATO mem­bers end up get­ting irra­di­at­ed as a result.

And that also brings us to the lat­est update on that threat: the immi­nent threat of a nuclear false flag has been lift­ed, accord­ing to Ukraine’s spy chief Kyry­lo Budanov. No details were giv­en regard­ing how it was that Ukraine was able to assess that the immi­nent false flag threat had been lift­ed. Nor are we told by Budanov that the threat has been lift­ed per­ma­nent­ly. Instead, Budanov insists that the threat of a nuclear false flag melt­down had been post­poned until a lat­er date. So at the same time we’re learn­ing about a secret US/Russian diplo­mat­ic backchan­nel — the kind of news that is guar­an­teed to make incred­i­bly risky plans that might result in a direct Russian/NATO con­flict a lot more tempt­ing for Ukraine — we’re also learn­ing that the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment has effec­tive­ly extend­ed the ‘nuclear false flag’ threat for the fore­see­able future. Ok, first, here’s that NBC News report on the secret unof­fi­cial diplo­mat­ic backchan­nel:

NBC News

For­mer U.S. offi­cials have held secret Ukraine talks with promi­nent Rus­sians

The aim of the dis­cus­sions is to lay the ground­work for poten­tial nego­ti­a­tions to end the war, peo­ple briefed on the talks told NBC News.

July 6, 2023, 5:02 AM CDT
By Josh Led­er­man

A group of for­mer senior U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials has held secret talks with promi­nent Rus­sians believed to be close to the Krem­lin — and, in at least one case, with the country’s top diplo­mat — with the aim of lay­ing the ground­work for nego­ti­a­tions to end the war in Ukraine, half a dozen peo­ple briefed on the dis­cus­sions said.

In a high-lev­el exam­ple of the back-chan­nel diplo­ma­cy tak­ing place behind the scenes, Russ­ian For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov met with mem­bers of the group for sev­er­al hours in April in New York, four for­mer offi­cials and two cur­rent offi­cials said.

On the agen­da were some of the thorni­est issues in the war in Ukraine, like the fate of Russ­ian-held ter­ri­to­ry that Ukraine may nev­er be able to lib­er­ate and the search for an elu­sive diplo­mat­ic off-ramp that could be tol­er­a­ble to both sides.

Meet­ing with Lavrov were Richard Haass, a for­mer diplo­mat and the out­go­ing pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, cur­rent and for­mer offi­cials said. The group was joined by Europe expert Charles Kupchan and Rus­sia expert Thomas Gra­ham, both for­mer White House and State Depart­ment offi­cials who are Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions fel­lows.

The for­mer U.S. offi­cials involved either did not respond to requests for com­ment or declined to com­ment on the record. All of the sources declined to be named in order to con­firm talks that were intend­ed to be kept con­fi­den­tial.

Among the goals, they said, is to keep chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Rus­sia open when pos­si­ble and to feel out where there might be room for future nego­ti­a­tion, com­pro­mise and diplo­ma­cy over end­ing the war.

The dis­cus­sions have tak­en place with the knowl­edge of the Biden admin­is­tra­tion but not at its direc­tion, and the for­mer offi­cials involved in the Lavrov meet­ing briefed the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil after­ward, two of the sources said.

The dis­cus­sions are known in diplo­mat­ic par­lance as “Track Two diplo­ma­cy,” a form of unof­fi­cial engage­ment involv­ing pri­vate cit­i­zens not in gov­ern­ment — or, in the case of the Lavrov meet­ing, “Track 1.5,” mean­ing cur­rent offi­cials are involved on one end of the con­ver­sa­tion. For­mal, high-lev­el diplo­mat­ic engage­ments between the U.S. and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments over Ukraine have been few and far between.

It is not clear how fre­quent­ly the back-chan­nel dis­cus­sions have tak­en place, nor whether they are part of a sin­gle, orga­nized effort.

On the U.S. side, the dis­cus­sions have involved some for­mer Defense Depart­ment offi­cials, includ­ing Mary Beth Long, a for­mer assis­tant defense sec­re­tary with deep expe­ri­ence in NATO issues, accord­ing to two peo­ple briefed on the talks.

At least one for­mer U.S. offi­cial has trav­eled to Rus­sia for dis­cus­sions involv­ing the Ukraine war, two of the peo­ple said.

Aside from Lavrov on the Russ­ian side, the dis­cus­sions have involved aca­d­e­mics, lead­ers from major think tanks or research insti­tutes and oth­ers in the Russ­ian for­eign pol­i­cy sphere per­ceived as hav­ing Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s ear or as being in reg­u­lar touch with Krem­lin deci­sion-mak­ers, the sources said. The peo­ple declined to iden­ti­fy the Russ­ian par­tic­i­pants by name, cit­ing con­cerns for their safe­ty.

...

An offi­cial in the office of Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy said that it would not com­ment on spe­cif­ic news reports based on unnamed sources but that its over­all posi­tion remained the same.

“Our posi­tion is unchanged — the fate of Ukraine can­not be decid­ed with­out Ukraine. Many times the pres­i­dent and all our offi­cial speak­ers spoke about it. Not anony­mous­ly, but quite specif­i­cal­ly and pub­licly,” they said.

Signs are mount­ing that the U.S. and its allies are eager for Moscow and Kyiv to move toward peace talks in the fall after Ukraine’s ongo­ing coun­terof­fen­sive is com­plet­ed.

Dur­ing a secret trip to Kyiv in May, CIA Direc­tor William Burns heard from Ukrain­ian offi­cials about the prospect of push­ing Moscow into peace talks by year’s end, offi­cials told The Wash­ing­ton Post. Next week, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden will meet in Lithua­nia with fel­low NATO lead­ers, who are sig­nal­ing they are still not ready to admit Ukraine into the alliance. And the approach­ing U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion has raised the urgency around the war’s endgame amid con­cerns Repub­li­cans will reduce their sup­port for Ukraine.

The meet­ing in April took place dur­ing a rare and brief vis­it by Lavrov to the U.S. to chair the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which has a rotat­ing pres­i­den­cy.

Around the same time, Haass and Kupchan wrote a lengthy arti­cle in For­eign Affairs, which is pub­lished by the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, lay­ing out what they described as “a plan for get­ting from the bat­tle­field to the nego­ti­at­ing table.”

The war in Ukraine

In the piece, titled “The West Needs a New Strat­e­gy in Ukraine,” Haass and Kupchan pre­dict­ed a stale­mate would most like­ly emerge after Ukraine’s coun­terof­fen­sive and rec­om­mend­ed that the U.S. start lay­ing the ground­work to pro­pose a cease-fire in which both Rus­sia and Ukraine would pull forces back from the front line, “effec­tive­ly cre­at­ing a demil­i­ta­rized zone.”

“A neu­tral orga­ni­za­tion — either the UN or the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe — would send in observers to mon­i­tor and enforce the cease-fire and pull­back,” the for­mer U.S. offi­cials wrote. “Assum­ing a cease-fire holds, peace talks should fol­low.”

A key ques­tion is whether the for­mer U.S. offi­cials will con­tin­ue talks after last month’s armed rebel­lion against Putin’s gov­ern­ment by mer­ce­nary chief Yevge­ny Prigozhin, which mud­died the pic­ture of how pow­er and influ­ence are flow­ing in Moscow. The dis­cus­sions have also been occur­ring in par­al­lel with direct U.S.-Russian con­ver­sa­tions about detained U.S. jour­nal­ist Evan Ger­shkovich, which Putin’s spokesman revealed this week.

Track Two talks have long played an impor­tant role in U.S. diplo­ma­cy, includ­ing in con­nec­tion with arms con­trol, often pro­vid­ing a less for­mal oppor­tu­ni­ty to test out ideas and respons­es in par­al­lel to offi­cial talks between gov­ern­ments.

In 1994, for­mer Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter trav­eled to Pyongyang, North Korea, as a pri­vate cit­i­zen seek­ing to halt North Korea’s nuclear pro­gram — a trip that became a major headache for the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion. Track Two talks between Israelis and Pales­tini­ans were also cred­it­ed with cre­at­ing the con­di­tions that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Yet in the con­text of the Ukraine war, the notion of for­mer U.S. offi­cials’ engag­ing infor­mal­ly with Rus­sians has caused a divide with­in the com­mu­ni­ty of Amer­i­can diplo­mats, for­eign pol­i­cy schol­ars and nation­al secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als.

“I wor­ry about what mes­sages might be con­veyed with that and the implic­it sig­nal that we’re des­per­ate for a deal,” said Bradley Bow­man, a for­mer Army offi­cer and Sen­ate aide who stud­ies polit­i­cal-mil­i­tary issues at the Wash­ing­ton-based Foun­da­tion for Defense of Democ­ra­cies. “Right now what we real­ly want to do is iso­late and put pres­sure on Putin.”

Michael McFaul, who was the U.S. ambas­sador to Rus­sia in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, said he was skep­ti­cal that there are any suit­able Track Two sur­ro­gates in Rus­sia these days who have direct access to Putin and could serve as infor­mal inter­me­di­aries.

And dis­cussing solu­tions to the war with­out Ukraini­ans at the table could under­cut the Biden administration’s insis­tence that Ukraine’s future will not be decid­ed by back­room deals between major pow­ers, he said.

“If you’re hav­ing Track Two nego­ti­a­tions about how to end the war, Ukraini­ans have to be there,” said McFaul, who said he is not involved in the Track Two dis­cus­sions.

Matt Dim­mick, a for­mer Rus­sia and East­ern Europe direc­tor at the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, said that even dis­cussing poten­tial deals with Rus­sia with­out Ukraine’s tak­ing the lead could ulti­mate­ly under­cut Kyiv’s lever­age.

“Ukraine doesn’t need and want inter­me­di­aries to start com­ing in and craft­ing cease-fire solu­tions and then entic­ing Europe and the U.S. to elbow Ukraine in that direc­tion,” Dim­mick said. “Ukraine real­izes their path to a secure future is dri­ving right through Russ­ian defens­es and leav­ing Rus­sia no choice but to come up with their own way out of Ukraine.”

———–

“For­mer U.S. offi­cials have held secret Ukraine talks with promi­nent Rus­sians” By Josh Led­er­man; NBC News; 07/06/20023

“The dis­cus­sions have tak­en place with the knowl­edge of the Biden admin­is­tra­tion but not at its direc­tion, and the for­mer offi­cials involved in the Lavrov meet­ing briefed the White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil after­ward, two of the sources said.”

The White House knows about these dis­cus­sions, even if they aren’t tech­ni­cal­ly being run under the White House­’s direc­tion. That’s the spin we’re get­ting on this diplo­mat­ic chan­nel that’s appar­ent­ly been open since April dur­ing a vis­it by Sergey Lavrov to the UN. We’re also told that at one for­mer US offi­cial has trav­eled to Rus­sia for these nego­ti­a­tions, so it does­n’t sound like this was just a one-off impromp­tu meet­ing but instead part of some sort of ongo­ing backchan­nel:

...
In a high-lev­el exam­ple of the back-chan­nel diplo­ma­cy tak­ing place behind the scenes, Russ­ian For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov met with mem­bers of the group for sev­er­al hours in April in New York, four for­mer offi­cials and two cur­rent offi­cials said.

On the agen­da were some of the thorni­est issues in the war in Ukraine, like the fate of Russ­ian-held ter­ri­to­ry that Ukraine may nev­er be able to lib­er­ate and the search for an elu­sive diplo­mat­ic off-ramp that could be tol­er­a­ble to both sides.

Meet­ing with Lavrov were Richard Haass, a for­mer diplo­mat and the out­go­ing pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, cur­rent and for­mer offi­cials said. The group was joined by Europe expert Charles Kupchan and Rus­sia expert Thomas Gra­ham, both for­mer White House and State Depart­ment offi­cials who are Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions fel­lows.

...

The dis­cus­sions are known in diplo­mat­ic par­lance as “Track Two diplo­ma­cy,” a form of unof­fi­cial engage­ment involv­ing pri­vate cit­i­zens not in gov­ern­ment — or, in the case of the Lavrov meet­ing, “Track 1.5,” mean­ing cur­rent offi­cials are involved on one end of the con­ver­sa­tion. For­mal, high-lev­el diplo­mat­ic engage­ments between the U.S. and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments over Ukraine have been few and far between.

It is not clear how fre­quent­ly the back-chan­nel dis­cus­sions have tak­en place, nor whether they are part of a sin­gle, orga­nized effort.

On the U.S. side, the dis­cus­sions have involved some for­mer Defense Depart­ment offi­cials, includ­ing Mary Beth Long, a for­mer assis­tant defense sec­re­tary with deep expe­ri­ence in NATO issues, accord­ing to two peo­ple briefed on the talks.

At least one for­mer U.S. offi­cial has trav­eled to Rus­sia for dis­cus­sions involv­ing the Ukraine war, two of the peo­ple said.
...

And while we obvi­ous­ly don’t know the details of these nego­ti­a­tions, we did sort of get a clue in the form of a For­eign Affairs piece authored by two of the par­tic­i­pants in this backchan­nel — Haas and Kupchan — describ­ing a strat­e­gy for arriv­ing as a cease-fire. A strat­e­gy that appears to revolve around the cre­ation of demil­i­ta­rized zone. In oth­er words, Ukraine could get it’s own ver­sion of the ‘38th par­al­lel’:

...
Around the same time, Haass and Kupchan wrote a lengthy arti­cle in For­eign Affairs, which is pub­lished by the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, lay­ing out what they described as “a plan for get­ting from the bat­tle­field to the nego­ti­at­ing table.”

...

In the piece, titled “The West Needs a New Strat­e­gy in Ukraine,” Haass and Kupchan pre­dict­ed a stale­mate would most like­ly emerge after Ukraine’s coun­terof­fen­sive and rec­om­mend­ed that the U.S. start lay­ing the ground­work to pro­pose a cease-fire in which both Rus­sia and Ukraine would pull forces back from the front line, “effec­tive­ly cre­at­ing a demil­i­ta­rized zone.”

“A neu­tral orga­ni­za­tion — either the UN or the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe — would send in observers to mon­i­tor and enforce the cease-fire and pull­back,” the for­mer U.S. offi­cials wrote. “Assum­ing a cease-fire holds, peace talks should fol­low.”
...

And as we should expect, the reports on these backchan­nel nego­ti­a­tions are being met with con­cern and skep­ti­cism by mem­bers of the US for­eign pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment and con­cern that the Ukraini­ans weren’t them­selves involved in the nego­ti­a­tions:

...
Yet in the con­text of the Ukraine war, the notion of for­mer U.S. offi­cials’ engag­ing infor­mal­ly with Rus­sians has caused a divide with­in the com­mu­ni­ty of Amer­i­can diplo­mats, for­eign pol­i­cy schol­ars and nation­al secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als.

“I wor­ry about what mes­sages might be con­veyed with that and the implic­it sig­nal that we’re des­per­ate for a deal,” said Bradley Bow­man, a for­mer Army offi­cer and Sen­ate aide who stud­ies polit­i­cal-mil­i­tary issues at the Wash­ing­ton-based Foun­da­tion for Defense of Democ­ra­cies. “Right now what we real­ly want to do is iso­late and put pres­sure on Putin.”

Michael McFaul, who was the U.S. ambas­sador to Rus­sia in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, said he was skep­ti­cal that there are any suit­able Track Two sur­ro­gates in Rus­sia these days who have direct access to Putin and could serve as infor­mal inter­me­di­aries.

And dis­cussing solu­tions to the war with­out Ukraini­ans at the table could under­cut the Biden administration’s insis­tence that Ukraine’s future will not be decid­ed by back­room deals between major pow­ers, he said.

“If you’re hav­ing Track Two nego­ti­a­tions about how to end the war, Ukraini­ans have to be there,” said McFaul, who said he is not involved in the Track Two dis­cus­sions.
...

So what kind of Ukrain­ian response can we expect from these reports? Sure, there’s going to be the rhetor­i­cal respons­es we can expect from Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment decry­ing these reports and insist­ing that the only way to end the con­flict is by mil­i­tar­i­ly forc­ing Rus­sia back to the 1991 bor­ders. But what kind of response can we expect from Ukraine in terms of action? That’s all part of what makes the evolv­ing ‘false flag’ accu­sa­tions over the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear pow­er plant increas­ing­ly omi­nous. Because as the fol­low­ing Reuters report indi­cates, the new nar­ra­tive on that ‘false flag’ warn­ing that we are get­ting from Kyiv is that the threat has mys­te­ri­ous­ly lift­ed but nonethe­less remains and can be resumed at any point. Yep, that’s the update we got from Ukraine’s spy chief Kyry­lo Budanov yes­ter­day. No details were giv­en regard­ing how it was that Kyiv was able to assess that the alleged false flag threat had been lift­ed. Instead, we’re just told by Budanov that the threat had been post­poned until a lat­er date. So the updat­ed mes­sag­ing we’re get­ting from Ukraine about the immi­nent false flag nuclear melt­down that Kyiv was warn­ing about a few days ago is that the immi­nent threat has been lift­ed but the gen­er­al threat of a Russ­ian false flag melt­down at the plant remains in place for the fore­see­able future:

Reuters

Ukraine spy chief says nuclear threat at Zapor­izhzhia plant sub­sid­ing

July 6, 202311:53 AM CDT
Updat­ed

KYIV, July 6 (Reuters) — Ukraine’s mil­i­tary spy chief said on Thurs­day that the threat of a Russ­ian attack on the vast Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant was reced­ing, but that it could eas­i­ly return as long as the facil­i­ty remained under occu­pa­tion by Moscow’s forces.

The intel­li­gence chief, Kyry­lo Budanov, made the com­ment in an inter­view with Reuters after days of warn­ings by Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian offi­cials accus­ing each oth­er of plot­ting an attack at Europe’s largest nuclear plant.

“The threat is decreas­ing”, said Budanov, who is the head of Ukraine’s Main Direc­torate of Intel­li­gence at the Min­istry of Defence, declin­ing to say how he was able to say.

Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skiy has for days warned of the grave threat at the facil­i­ty, most recent­ly say­ing Russ­ian forces had mined the roof of sev­er­al reac­tors.

Budanov did not give details of what had been done to reduce the threat, or what it con­sist­ed of. He made clear he believed the threat had only been post­poned until lat­er.

“Sor­ry I can’t tell you what hap­pened recent­ly but the fact is that the threat is decreas­ing”, he said. “This means that at least we have all togeth­er with joint efforts some­how post­poned a techno­genic cat­a­stro­phe”.

“It’s not elim­i­nat­ed. As long as the sta­tion is occu­pied this can hap­pen again any time if they want”, he said.

...

———–

“Ukraine spy chief says nuclear threat at Zapor­izhzhia plant sub­sid­ing”; Reuters; 07/06/2023

“Budanov did not give details of what had been done to reduce the threat, or what it con­sist­ed of. He made clear he believed the threat had only been post­poned until lat­er.”

No details were giv­en, and yet the over­ar­ch­ing mes­sage from Ukraine’s spy chief was dis­turbing­ly clear: the alle­ga­tions about a loom­ing nuclear false flag event aren’t going away. They’re just no longer immi­nent:

...
“Sor­ry I can’t tell you what hap­pened recent­ly but the fact is that the threat is decreas­ing”, he said. “This means that at least we have all togeth­er with joint efforts some­how post­poned a techno­genic cat­a­stro­phe”.

“It’s not elim­i­nat­ed. As long as the sta­tion is occu­pied this can hap­pen again any time if they want”, he said.
...

How long before we get renewed Ukrain­ian warn­ings about an immi­nent false flag nuclear melt­down? Time will tell. But it’s not hard to imag­ine that future Ukrain­ian threats of nuclear false flag melt­downs are going to be high­ly cor­re­lat­ed with the ‘threat’ of a diplo­mat­ic cease-fire break­through.

As out­cry grows over the US deci­sion to send clus­ter muni­tions to Ukraine and the prospects of lit­ter­ing Ukraine with weapons that will remain a civil­ian night­mare fore years and decades to come, here’s a pair of sto­ries about anoth­er weapon sys­tem with enor­mous ‘off bat­tle­field’ harm poten­tial: the tens of thou­sands of anti-tank NLAW mis­sile sys­tems that have been flood­ing into Ukraine for over a year now. And, in par­tic­u­lar, flood­ing into the hands of exact­ly the kinds of groups that could wreak hav­oc with them long after the con­flict is over. Because we’re going to see, not only do there appear to be min­i­mal con­trols into place to track these pow­er­ful should-fired mis­sile plat­forms, but it looks like the Azov bat­tal­ion has been one of the pri­ma­ry recip­i­ents. That was the find­ing pre­sent­ing by Declas­si­fied UK back in May in report that detailed on Azov leader Sergei “Boats­man” Korotkikh — an overt neo-Nazi — has been post­ing on social media pho­tos and videos of the NLAWs in his pos­ses­sion since March of 2022. Recall the video that appear on Youtube in the ear­ly days of Ukraine’s recap­ture of Bucha where Azov leader Korotkikh appeared to give his troops per­mis­sion to shoot any­one not wear­ing a blue arm band.

And as we’re also going to see, while the UK gov­ern­ment is well aware of the fact that the tens of thou­sands of NLAWs it’s sent to Ukraine are end­ing up in Azov’s hands, that’s appar­ent­ly been deemed to be OK by the UK because Azov has been ‘depoliti­cized’. Or as British defence min­is­ter James Heappey put it, “it is high­ly like­ly that mem­bers of the Azov bat­tal­ion have had access to UK sup­plied anti-tank weapons,” but he claimed “rig­or­ous risk assess­ments” and “appro­pri­ate mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures” had been under­tak­en and “Since being made a part of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard in 2014, the bat­tal­ion has made some efforts to de-politi­cise. All found­ing mem­bers left the bat­tal­ion and formed a polit­i­cal par­ty.” That’s the UK’s offi­cial line on the pol­i­cy of hand­ing NLAWs to Azov: don’t wor­ry, they aren’t Nazis any­more. As the Declas­si­fied report also notes, Azov founder Andriy Bilet­sky cur­rent­ly claims to be in com­mand of an Azov spe­cial forces group, the 3rd Sep­a­rate Assault Brigade, and all of the com­man­ders on the unit are either vet­er­ans of the Azov move­ment or oth­er far right groups like Right Sec­tor and Cen­turia.

And as we’re going to see in May 2022 report in the Belfast Tele­graph — Belfast being the city where NLAWs are man­u­fac­tured — the for­mer super­in­ten­dent of the Norther Ire­land police was already warn­ing that the 17,000 NLAWs that had already been shipped to Ukraine by that point were unac­count­ed for an posed a grow­ing secu­ri­ty risk. The kind of domes­tic ter­ror secu­ri­ty risk that places like North Ire­land are trag­i­cal­ly famil­iar with but which obvi­ous­ly aren’t going to be lim­it­ed to North­ern Ire­land. Where is the world are these unac­count­ed for NLAWs end­ing up? We’ll even­tu­al­ly find out, in the form of NLAW ter­ror attacks.

So while con­cerns about the long-term impact of clus­ter muni­tions are indeed high­ly war­rant­ed, it’s also a good time to recall that clus­ter muni­tions are far from the only high­ly prob­lem­at­ic weapons sys­tem with major long-term secu­ri­ty con­cerns flow­ing into this con­flict zone:

Declas­si­fied UK

Revealed: Russ­ian neo-Nazi leader obtained UK mis­siles in Ukraine

Sergei Korotkikh acquired anti-tank launch­ers from Britain, despite being accused of behead­ing a migrant when he led a neo-Nazi group in Rus­sia. UK-sup­plied weapons have reached a range of far-right forces in Ukraine, our inves­ti­ga­tion finds.

PHIL MILLER
17 May 2023

Sergei Korotkikh inspects an arms cache. (Pho­to: Botsman_ua / Telegram)

* Korotkikh found­ed the Nation­al Social­ist Soci­ety in Rus­sia and is a vet­er­an of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov move­ment
* Declas­si­fied has traced anti-tank launch­ers in his arse­nal back to Britain
* Korotkikh has been seen wear­ing a Black Sun sym­bol – orig­i­nal­ly from Nazi Ger­many – on his body armour
* Azov vet­er­ans in Kharkiv were the first force in the besieged city to receive UK weapons
* Azov founder Andriy Bilet­sky claims to be com­mand­ing Azov-affil­i­at­ed armed units in Bakhmut

A neo-Nazi accused of mur­der­ing immi­grants has filmed him­self in pos­ses­sion of five anti-tank rock­ets that Britain sup­plied to Ukraine, an inves­ti­ga­tion by Declas­si­fied UK has found.

Sergei Korotkikh can be seen with UK-made mis­sile launch­ers in three videos post­ed to his Telegram chan­nel. Cam­paign Against Arms Trade said the dis­cov­ery is “very trou­bling”.

It adds to evi­dence that some weapons sent by Britain to Ukraine have end­ed up in the hands of extrem­ist forces. Declas­si­fied recent­ly uncov­ered anoth­er case where a jihadist con­vict­ed of tor­ture had received UK mis­siles.

...

On Mon­day, Rishi Sunak pledged hun­dreds more mis­siles and armed drones in a meet­ing with Zelen­sky at Che­quers.

Nation­al Social­ist Soci­ety

Declas­si­fied has been inves­ti­gat­ing Sergei Korotkikh, who is orig­i­nal­ly from Belarus. Around 20 years ago, he found­ed a Russ­ian neo-Nazi group – the Nation­al Social­ist Soci­ety.

It spread fear in Moscow by tar­get­ing dark­er-skinned guest work­ers from the Cau­ca­sus and cen­tral Asia.

The group was banned and its mem­bers con­vict­ed of dozens of racist mur­ders.

Korotkikh is alleged to have killed two migrants in 2007, behead­ing one of the vic­tims – Shamil Odamanov – on cam­era beneath a swasti­ka flag.

He denies the alle­ga­tions, which fea­tured in the mul­ti-award win­ning doc­u­men­tary Cred­it for Mur­der by Israeli direc­tor Vla­dy Antonevicz.

Korotkikh was even report­ed to have links to Russ­ian intel­li­gence and police, who may have recruit­ed him as an agent short­ly after the killings.

He would not be charged with mur­der until 2021, by which time he had long since left the coun­try.

Defend­ing Ukraine

Korotkikh’s murky past in Rus­sia did not stop him being wel­comed to Ukraine. He moved there in 2014 when the coun­try was split over its rela­tion­ship with Moscow.

He joined the Azov bat­tal­ion, a neo-Nazi mili­tia found­ed by Ukrain­ian far-right activist Andriy Bilet­sky to fight against pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists in the Don­bas.

Bilet­sky report­ed­ly once said he want­ed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans].”

Korotkikh quick­ly acquired Ukrain­ian cit­i­zen­ship in a cer­e­mo­ny con­duct­ed by the then pres­i­dent, Petro Poroshenko. Mean­while the Azov bat­tal­ion was inte­grat­ed into Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard.

When Rus­sia launched its full scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, the major­i­ty of Azov’s serv­ing sol­diers were sur­round­ed at their strong­hold in Mar­i­upol.

Azov vet­er­ans in oth­er cities rapid­ly formed new units, includ­ing elite sec­tions with­in a Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Defence Force (TDF) in the cap­i­tal Kyiv, which Korotkikh joined. TDFs allowed reservists and vol­un­teers to resist Rus­sia in para­mil­i­tary-style groups, nom­i­nal­ly under the con­trol of Ukraine’s mil­i­tary.

‘Incom­pa­ra­ble male plea­sure’

On the day the inva­sion began, Korotkikh said he had enough small arms, but “would like to get some­thing anti-tank, and some­thing heavy. And prefer­ably a cou­ple of dozen MANPADS [portable sur­face-to-air mis­sile launch­ers]. So that their heli­copters do not want to fly here.”

Antic­i­pat­ing the out­break of war, British min­is­ters had hur­ried­ly sent Ukraine thou­sands of NLAWs, a sophis­ti­cat­ed anti-tank weapon. They cost around £20,000 each and can even tar­get air­craft.

Korotkikh ini­tial­ly had trou­ble find­ing them. He com­plained: “I have been run­ning around the city since 9am in an attempt to get weapons, but they didn’t arrive anywhere…There are none of the much vaunt­ed British anti-tank sys­tems at all. I can’t find a trace of them. They are not here.”

But with­in two weeks of the inva­sion, some of these mis­siles were in his arse­nal. On 6 March 2022, Korotkikh post­ed a video of him trav­el­ling inside a van with two NLAWs at his feet.

He wrote: “We have so many weapons that we are lit­er­al­ly lit­tered with shells and rock­ets. There is, of course, a spe­cial buzz when you lit­er­al­ly ride the NLAW.” On cam­era, he described hav­ing NLAWs as “incom­pa­ra­ble male plea­sure”.

A few hours lat­er, he post­ed a scene from the movie Hot Fuzz, where police find a farm shed full of weapons. He com­ment­ed: “In every house in Ukraine after the war” with a grin­ning emo­ji.

Korotkikh appears to have used a Kyiv sports club as his arms depot, post­ing a video the next day with two NLAWs propped up against the wall behind him. By the end of March, footage shows he had at least five NLAWs stored in a gym.

‘Play foot­ball with your heads’

Through­out this time, he post­ed grue­some and racist mes­sages on Telegram. In one, he shared a pho­to of a sev­ered head in a crate, writ­ing: “The Ukraini­ans, unlike the Russ­ian com­mand, are try­ing to return Putin’s sol­diers to their fam­i­lies. It is not always pos­si­ble to return the whole thing, but, nev­er­the­less…”

In anoth­er video addressed to Chechen troops deployed by Putin to invade Ukraine, he said: “We will play foot­ball with your heads when we cut them off.”

Oth­er posts show Korotkikh crit­i­cis­ing Rus­sia for alleged­ly using Arab mer­ce­nar­ies from Syr­ia and “black can­non fod­der from the Cen­tral African Repub­lic”, say­ing: “Kyi­van Rus against the Asian Horde. The masks have been dropped. This only makes it eas­i­er for real white Euro­peans to fight.”

The posts con­firm that his hatred of Russ­ian minori­ties has per­sist­ed, view­ing the war in Ukraine as a bat­tle for white suprema­cy. In oth­er pho­tos on his Telegram chan­nel, which has 55,000 sub­scribers, he can be seen wear­ing a Black Sun sym­bol – orig­i­nal­ly from Nazi Ger­many – on his body armour.

‘Not good enough’

The NLAWs in Korotkikh’s arse­nal can be traced back to those sup­plied by Britain. A ref­er­ence num­ber, 1H2/Y31/S/12/GB/5126, is vis­i­ble on the box of one launch­er.

It match­es codes print­ed on oth­er crates that Ukrain­ian media said were deliv­ered by the UK in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

The only oth­er coun­try known to have sup­plied NLAWs to Ukraine by March 2022 was Lux­em­bourg, which sent 100 – a tiny frac­tion of the 5,000 shipped from Britain.

NLAWS were designed by Swedish com­pa­ny Saab and assem­bled by Thales in Belfast.

Par­tial­ly obscured writ­ing on Korotkikh’s NLAW box­es are from a ref­er­ence code that reads: GM NLAW K170A2 SAAB BOFORS DYNAMICS AB 1 225 613.

A Saab spokesper­son said: “There is exten­sive export leg­is­la­tion in both Swe­den and the UK which gov­ern our activ­i­ties and which we adhere to. We are not pro­vid­ing fur­ther com­ment on indi­vid­ual mat­ters”.

Lin­da Åker­ström, from the Swedish Peace and Arbi­tra­tion Soci­ety, which mon­i­tors arms firms like Saab, com­ment­ed: “Even if you ful­ly sup­port export­ing arms to Ukraine in light of the bru­tal Russ­ian attack, there is also the need to acknowl­edge the risks involved. Arms end­ing up in the hands of crim­i­nals is one of them. The risk that arms will flow out of Ukraine to oth­er armed con­flicts or into crim­i­nal activ­i­ties once that war stops is real and must be addressed.”

Dr Sam Per­lo-Free­man, a researcher at Cam­paign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), told Declas­si­fied: “The poten­tial for west­ern arms sup­plied to Ukraine to fall into the wrong hands – whether far-right pro-Ukrain­ian forces, crim­i­nal gangs, or divert­ed to con­flicts in oth­er coun­tries, has been a major con­cern from the begin­ning.

“This very trou­bling case shows that the UK gov­ern­ment is not doing enough to guard against this. While the EU and US have tak­en some mea­sures to mon­i­tor what hap­pens to arms to Ukraine, the Min­istry of Defence (MoD) has refused even to con­firm or deny if it has any such mea­sures or plans. This is not good enough.

“The UK gov­ern­ment must set out clear­ly what it is doing to pre­vent diver­sion of weapons sup­plied to Ukraine, which will like­ly become a far greater prob­lem for Ukraine and the rest of Europe when this hor­rif­ic war even­tu­al­ly ends.”

...

Azov grows

Despite Putin claim­ing to ‘de-Naz­i­fy’ Ukraine, Azov-affil­i­at­ed units have spread since his ille­gal inva­sion.

Azov vet­er­ans quick­ly formed an impor­tant com­bat unit in Kharkiv, known as Krak­en. It was the first force in the besieged city to receive NLAWs, with one of its lead­ers, Kon­stan­tin Nemichev, seen learn­ing how to use the weapon.

Korotkikh stressed the movement’s impor­tance, com­ment­ing: “We all came from our beloved Azov. I am espe­cial­ly pleased to say this now. Yes, I am one of the founders of Azov. And our broth­er­hood is now the back­bone of defence in Kharkiv, the Dnieper, Sumy and oth­er cities. And of course, in our ‘king­dom’ Mar­i­upol. Proud of the Azov Broth­er­hood! #our_war.”

The post from 1 March 2022 was accom­pa­nied by a pho­to of Korotkikh hold­ing an Azov flag with anoth­er man, who had a sniper rifle.

He wrote: “Meet Shark! An inter­est­ing type, for four years he was the com­man­der of the Azov bat­tal­ion. Resigned a month and a half ago. And here he is again the com­man­der of the spe­cial forces group …(you will find out the name of the group after)”.

Korotkikh did not name the new squad, but it looks like the Azov unit that helped defend the cities of Kyiv and Irpin. His sub­or­di­nates entered Bucha soon after the retreat of Russ­ian troops who had mas­sa­cred civil­ians.

The unit from Kyiv began to call itself an Azov Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Force before being reformed this year as the 3rd Sep­a­rate Assault Brigade, which is fight­ing on the front­line in Bakhmut.

The Brigade describes itself as “formed on the same prin­ci­ples as the leg­endary ‘Azov’ and the entire Azov move­ment.” Last week the orig­i­nal founder of Azov, Andriy Bilet­sky, claimed to be in com­mand of the Brigade’s tac­ti­cal units and took cred­it for a high-pro­file break­through of Russ­ian lines in Bakhmut.

All of the com­man­ders fea­tured on the Brigade’s web­site are either vet­er­ans of the Azov move­ment or oth­er far-right Ukrain­ian groups like Right Sec­tor and Cen­turia.

The Brigade said it is active­ly recruit­ing “stormtroop­ers” to become a “uni­ver­sal death machine”. Its sol­diers often appear armed with British weapon­ry, and the Brigade’s ban­ner image on Face­book shows one of their sol­diers aim­ing an NLAW.

‘Rig­or­ous risk assess­ments’

British defence min­is­ter James Heappey has pre­vi­ous­ly admit­ted to MPs “it is high­ly like­ly that mem­bers of the Azov bat­tal­ion have had access to UK sup­plied anti-tank weapons,” but he claimed “rig­or­ous risk assess­ments” and “appro­pri­ate mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures” had been under­tak­en.

Heappey part­ly jus­ti­fied British arms reach­ing Azov mil­i­tants by say­ing: “Since being made a part of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard in 2014, the bat­tal­ion has made some efforts to de-politi­cise. All found­ing mem­bers left the bat­tal­ion and formed a polit­i­cal par­ty.”

Bilet­sky was elect­ed to par­lia­ment in 2014 but lost his seat at Ukraine’s last elec­tion in 2019. Far-right par­ties only scraped 2% of the vote in that poll.

But Biletsky’s recent claims to be com­mand­ing Azov-affil­i­at­ed armed units in Bakhmut indi­cates that Azov founders are still heav­i­ly involved in Ukraine’s mil­i­tary – and remain an impor­tant pow­er bloc in the war torn coun­try.

That, cou­pled with fig­ures like Korotkikh hav­ing access to British arms, could give UK police and MI5 cause for con­cern about poten­tial blow­back.

Before the war, the Azov move­ment was a mag­net for far-right activists across Europe, includ­ing some from the banned British neo-Nazi group Nation­al Action. One of its organ­is­ers, Mark Jones, vis­it­ed the Azov battalion’s head­quar­ters in 2017.

Jones was lat­er jailed in Britain under the Ter­ror­ism Act. Police found a pho­to of him giv­ing a Hitler salute in the exe­cu­tion room of Buchen­wald con­cen­tra­tion camp in Ger­many.

Oth­ers have sug­gest­ed Azov mem­bers are just cos­play­ing Nazism. Mark Ayres, a British army vet­er­an and con­vict­ed thief, joined the Kyiv Azov unit “by acci­dent” after the inva­sion.

He told Sky: “They’re not the mon­sters and psy­chos that I would envis­age neo-Nazis to be – I mean they’re not all like that. A lot of them are decent guys, just with stu­pid views.

“I say [sic] to my mate: ‘I don’t under­stand how you can say you’re a neo-Nazi when you’re a f*****g decent bloke, with decent morals.’

“And he’s like: ‘Well, I’m not real­ly…’. It’s just like they’re play­ing at it. They’re caught up in want­i­ng to belong to some­thing that catch­es them in. It’s so stu­pid.”

————

“Revealed: Russ­ian neo-Nazi leader obtained UK mis­siles in Ukraine” by PHIL MILLER; Declas­si­fied UK; 05/17/2023

“Korotkikh appears to have used a Kyiv sports club as his arms depot, post­ing a video the next day with two NLAWs propped up against the wall behind him. By the end of March, footage shows he had at least five NLAWs stored in a gym.”

Is there a risk of NLAWs falling into the wrong hands? Hmmm...considering it took about two weeks for Sergei Korotkikh to get his hands on them, it sure seems like a lot of the ‘wrong hands’ must have got­ten their hands on these weapons. The kind of weapons that would be invalu­able for ter­ror cam­paigns and strate­gic attacks on gov­ern­ment offi­cials:

...
On the day the inva­sion began, Korotkikh said he had enough small arms, but “would like to get some­thing anti-tank, and some­thing heavy. And prefer­ably a cou­ple of dozen MANPADS [portable sur­face-to-air mis­sile launch­ers]. So that their heli­copters do not want to fly here.”

Antic­i­pat­ing the out­break of war, British min­is­ters had hur­ried­ly sent Ukraine thou­sands of NLAWs, a sophis­ti­cat­ed anti-tank weapon. They cost around £20,000 each and can even tar­get air­craft.

Korotkikh ini­tial­ly had trou­ble find­ing them. He com­plained: “I have been run­ning around the city since 9am in an attempt to get weapons, but they didn’t arrive anywhere…There are none of the much vaunt­ed British anti-tank sys­tems at all. I can’t find a trace of them. They are not here.”

But with­in two weeks of the inva­sion, some of these mis­siles were in his arse­nal. On 6 March 2022, Korotkikh post­ed a video of him trav­el­ling inside a van with two NLAWs at his feet.

He wrote: “We have so many weapons that we are lit­er­al­ly lit­tered with shells and rock­ets. There is, of course, a spe­cial buzz when you lit­er­al­ly ride the NLAW.” On cam­era, he described hav­ing NLAWs as “incom­pa­ra­ble male plea­sure”.

A few hours lat­er, he post­ed a scene from the movie Hot Fuzz, where police find a farm shed full of weapons. He com­ment­ed: “In every house in Ukraine after the war” with a grin­ning emo­ji.
...

And it’s not a mys­tery as to where these NLAWs are com­ing from. What is more of a mys­tery is what exact­ly has the UK done to con­trol the export of these pow­er­ful weapons and ensure they don’t fall into the wrong hands:

...
The NLAWs in Korotkikh’s arse­nal can be traced back to those sup­plied by Britain. A ref­er­ence num­ber, 1H2/Y31/S/12/GB/5126, is vis­i­ble on the box of one launch­er.

It match­es codes print­ed on oth­er crates that Ukrain­ian media said were deliv­ered by the UK in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

The only oth­er coun­try known to have sup­plied NLAWs to Ukraine by March 2022 was Lux­em­bourg, which sent 100 – a tiny frac­tion of the 5,000 shipped from Britain.
NLAWS were designed by Swedish com­pa­ny Saab and assem­bled by Thales in Belfast.

Par­tial­ly obscured writ­ing on Korotkikh’s NLAW box­es are from a ref­er­ence code that reads: GM NLAW K170A2 SAAB BOFORS DYNAMICS AB 1 225 613.

A Saab spokesper­son said: “There is exten­sive export leg­is­la­tion in both Swe­den and the UK which gov­ern our activ­i­ties and which we adhere to. We are not pro­vid­ing fur­ther com­ment on indi­vid­ual mat­ters”.

Lin­da Åker­ström, from the Swedish Peace and Arbi­tra­tion Soci­ety, which mon­i­tors arms firms like Saab, com­ment­ed: “Even if you ful­ly sup­port export­ing arms to Ukraine in light of the bru­tal Russ­ian attack, there is also the need to acknowl­edge the risks involved. Arms end­ing up in the hands of crim­i­nals is one of them. The risk that arms will flow out of Ukraine to oth­er armed con­flicts or into crim­i­nal activ­i­ties once that war stops is real and must be addressed.”

Dr Sam Per­lo-Free­man, a researcher at Cam­paign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), told Declas­si­fied: “The poten­tial for west­ern arms sup­plied to Ukraine to fall into the wrong hands – whether far-right pro-Ukrain­ian forces, crim­i­nal gangs, or divert­ed to con­flicts in oth­er coun­tries, has been a major con­cern from the begin­ning.

“This very trou­bling case shows that the UK gov­ern­ment is not doing enough to guard against this. While the EU and US have tak­en some mea­sures to mon­i­tor what hap­pens to arms to Ukraine, the Min­istry of Defence (MoD) has refused even to con­firm or deny if it has any such mea­sures or plans. This is not good enough.

“The UK gov­ern­ment must set out clear­ly what it is doing to pre­vent diver­sion of weapons sup­plied to Ukraine, which will like­ly become a far greater prob­lem for Ukraine and the rest of Europe when this hor­rif­ic war even­tu­al­ly ends.”
...

And note that Sergei Korotkikh’s hands obvi­ous­ly aren’t the only wrong hands these weapons are falling into. Azov units have been among the first to receive these weapons in cities like Kharkiv. And who do we see lead­ing the Azov “3rd Sep­a­rate Assault Brigade”? Azov neo-Nazi founder Andriy Bilet­sky. This is a good time to recall how the main­stream white­wash­ing of Bil­tesky’s overt Nazi his­to­ry quick­ly kicked into over­drive in the weeks fol­low­ing the start of the con­flict. A white­wash­ing that appar­ent­ly over­lapped with the deliv­ery of NLAWs:

...
Azov grows

Despite Putin claim­ing to ‘de-Naz­i­fy’ Ukraine, Azov-affil­i­at­ed units have spread since his ille­gal inva­sion.

Azov vet­er­ans quick­ly formed an impor­tant com­bat unit in Kharkiv, known as Krak­en. It was the first force in the besieged city to receive NLAWs, with one of its lead­ers, Kon­stan­tin Nemichev, seen learn­ing how to use the weapon.

Korotkikh stressed the movement’s impor­tance, com­ment­ing: “We all came from our beloved Azov. I am espe­cial­ly pleased to say this now. Yes, I am one of the founders of Azov. And our broth­er­hood is now the back­bone of defence in Kharkiv, the Dnieper, Sumy and oth­er cities. And of course, in our ‘king­dom’ Mar­i­upol. Proud of the Azov Broth­er­hood! #our_war.”

The post from 1 March 2022 was accom­pa­nied by a pho­to of Korotkikh hold­ing an Azov flag with anoth­er man, who had a sniper rifle.

He wrote: “Meet Shark! An inter­est­ing type, for four years he was the com­man­der of the Azov bat­tal­ion. Resigned a month and a half ago. And here he is again the com­man­der of the spe­cial forces group …(you will find out the name of the group after)”.

Korotkikh did not name the new squad, but it looks like the Azov unit that helped defend the cities of Kyiv and Irpin. His sub­or­di­nates entered Bucha soon after the retreat of Russ­ian troops who had mas­sa­cred civil­ians.

The unit from Kyiv began to call itself an Azov Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Force before being reformed this year as the 3rd Sep­a­rate Assault Brigade, which is fight­ing on the front­line in Bakhmut.

The Brigade describes itself as “formed on the same prin­ci­ples as the leg­endary ‘Azov’ and the entire Azov move­ment.” Last week the orig­i­nal founder of Azov, Andriy Bilet­sky, claimed to be in com­mand of the Brigade’s tac­ti­cal units and took cred­it for a high-pro­file break­through of Russ­ian lines in Bakhmut.

All of the com­man­ders fea­tured on the Brigade’s web­site are either vet­er­ans of the Azov move­ment or oth­er far-right Ukrain­ian groups like Right Sec­tor and Cen­turia.

The Brigade said it is active­ly recruit­ing “stormtroop­ers” to become a “uni­ver­sal death machine”. Its sol­diers often appear armed with British weapon­ry, and the Brigade’s ban­ner image on Face­book shows one of their sol­diers aim­ing an NLAW.
...

Also note the expla­na­tion we’re get­ting from the UK over these con­cerns about hand­ing NLAWs to Nazis: more claims that Azov has been ‘depoliti­cized’ since being for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. This, despite the fact that the overt Nazi lead­ers like Bilet­sky and Korotkikh con­tin­ue to play lead­ing roles:

...
‘Rig­or­ous risk assess­ments’

British defence min­is­ter James Heappey has pre­vi­ous­ly admit­ted to MPs “it is high­ly like­ly that mem­bers of the Azov bat­tal­ion have had access to UK sup­plied anti-tank weapons,” but he claimed “rig­or­ous risk assess­ments” and “appro­pri­ate mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures” had been under­tak­en.

Heappey part­ly jus­ti­fied British arms reach­ing Azov mil­i­tants by say­ing: “Since being made a part of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard in 2014, the bat­tal­ion has made some efforts to de-politi­cise. All found­ing mem­bers left the bat­tal­ion and formed a polit­i­cal par­ty.”

Bilet­sky was elect­ed to par­lia­ment in 2014 but lost his seat at Ukraine’s last elec­tion in 2019. Far-right par­ties only scraped 2% of the vote in that poll.

But Biletsky’s recent claims to be com­mand­ing Azov-affil­i­at­ed armed units in Bakhmut indi­cates that Azov founders are still heav­i­ly involved in Ukraine’s mil­i­tary – and remain an impor­tant pow­er bloc in the war torn coun­try.

That, cou­pled with fig­ures like Korotkikh hav­ing access to British arms, could give UK police and MI5 cause for con­cern about poten­tial blow­back.

Before the war, the Azov move­ment was a mag­net for far-right activists across Europe, includ­ing some from the banned British neo-Nazi group Nation­al Action. One of its organ­is­ers, Mark Jones, vis­it­ed the Azov battalion’s head­quar­ters in 2017.

Jones was lat­er jailed in Britain under the Ter­ror­ism Act. Police found a pho­to of him giv­ing a Hitler salute in the exe­cu­tion room of Buchen­wald con­cen­tra­tion camp in Ger­many.
...

But it’s not sim­ply the case that the UK has appar­ent­ly been know­ing­ly hand­ing these NLAWs to Azov units for over a year now using “rig­or­ous risk assess­ments” and “appro­pri­ate mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures.” As the fol­low­ing Belfast Tele­graph arti­cle from May of 2022 describes, the for­mer super­in­ten­dent of North Ire­land’s police force, Ken Pen­ning­ton, was already issu­ing warn­ings about the fact that the 17,000 NLAWs that had already been sent to Ukraine by that point were unac­count­ed for and pos­si­bly falling into the hands of crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists:

Belfast Tele­graph

Smug­glers could sell ‘tank killer’ mis­siles to NI ter­ror gangs

Skint con­scripts may pass on weapon sys­tems, warns ex-PSNI man

John Ton­er
Sun 1 May 2022 at 02:54

Thou­sands of Belfast-made ‘tank killer’ mis­siles sent to Ukraine could end up in the hands of local gang­sters and ter­ror­ists, a counter-ter­ror­ism expert has warned.

For­mer PSNI super­in­ten­dent Ken Pen­ning­ton said around 17,000 of the NLAW mis­sile sys­tems were unac­count­ed for.

He told Sun­day Life the weapons could be smug­gled out and end up in the hands of groups such as the UVF, UDA and dis­si­dent repub­li­cans.

Mr Pen­ning­ton said: “There is a dan­ger that high-tech, com­bat-grade weapons and equip­ment could flow out of the con­flict and into the hands of crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists across Europe, includ­ing here.

“If you look at Ukraine and the NLAW sys­tem, there’s about 17,000 of those mis­siles there right now.

“They’re not issued against receipt, so we don’t know where they are. There will be equip­ment lying in fields and there will be dis­af­fect­ed con­scripts with mon­ey prob­lems sell­ing equip­ment.

“That is why I’ve been try­ing to moti­vate multi­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions to get a grip on human traf­fick­ing because as bad as it is — and it’s a ter­ri­ble crime — it’s also going to get some of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry out of Ukraine via organ­ised crime.”

Mr Pen­ning­ton flew out to the coun­try recent­ly to help get sup­plies in and orphaned chil­dren out.

The for­mer close pro­tec­tion offi­cer worked in the fight against human traf­fick­ing before mov­ing to counter-ter­ror­ism. He now works with char­i­ties and NGOs to fight peo­ple smug­glers.

He said that stop­ping human traf­fick­ing gangs was vital in dis­rupt­ing the poten­tial trade in ille­gal weapon­ry.

“My role was to co-ordi­nate the con­voys tak­ing in sup­plies like food and first aid, then once they had deliv­ered those sup­plies, I co-ordi­nat­ed them get­ting orphans out of Ukraine and into Poland,” he said of his recent trip.

“I was train­ing the dri­vers on how to run con­voys so that they don’t attract the atten­tion of the Rus­sians.

“[I was] also work­ing with the char­i­ties to give them rudi­men­ta­ry safe­ty train­ing.

“There’s a real dan­ger that if the right peo­ple can’t get these chil­dren out, traf­fick­ers will. It was part of my role to try and ensure that doesn’t hap­pen.

“One of the issues is that human traf­fick­ing is seen as a low-risk, high-prof­it oppor­tu­ni­ty by crim­i­nals. The only dif­fer­ence between the two is ter­ror­ists like to have a sto­ry to jus­ti­fy their crimes, where­as organ­ised crim­i­nals don’t. They just care about the mon­ey.

“The prob­lem is the peo­ple who learn to move peo­ple can learn to move any­thing, includ­ing drugs, firearms, cash and weapons.”

...

———-

“Smug­glers could sell ‘tank killer’ mis­siles to NI ter­ror gangs” by John Ton­er; Belfast Tele­graph; 05/01/2022

“For­mer PSNI super­in­ten­dent Ken Pen­ning­ton said around 17,000 of the NLAW mis­sile sys­tems were unac­count­ed for.”

17,000 unac­count­ed for NLAWs. And that was his esti­mate as of May of 2022, less than two and a half months into the con­flict. What is that esti­mate now?

...
He told Sun­day Life the weapons could be smug­gled out and end up in the hands of groups such as the UVF, UDA and dis­si­dent repub­li­cans.

Mr Pen­ning­ton said: “There is a dan­ger that high-tech, com­bat-grade weapons and equip­ment could flow out of the con­flict and into the hands of crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists across Europe, includ­ing here.

“If you look at Ukraine and the NLAW sys­tem, there’s about 17,000 of those mis­siles there right now.

“They’re not issued against receipt, so we don’t know where they are. There will be equip­ment lying in fields and there will be dis­af­fect­ed con­scripts with mon­ey prob­lems sell­ing equip­ment.

“That is why I’ve been try­ing to moti­vate multi­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions to get a grip on human traf­fick­ing because as bad as it is — and it’s a ter­ri­ble crime — it’s also going to get some of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry out of Ukraine via organ­ised crime.”
...

How many NLAWs are there just lay­ing around in the fields of Ukraine at this point? And how many have been tucked away in weapons stash­es, wait­ing for the right oppor­tu­ni­ty dur­ing a post-war fight over Ukraine’s polit­i­cal future? 1,000? 10,000? We have no idea, but it’s worth keep­ing in mind that we have a very good idea regard­ing how many NLAWs that are required to stage a major ter­ror event: one.

It’s a game chang­er. That’s the pre­vail­ing spin we’re hear­ing from Ukraine on the high­ly con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion by the White House to deliv­er clus­ter muni­tions to Ukraine. Except, of course, it’s not a game chang­er at all. Or rather, it’s a ‘game chang­er’ Ukraine has already been using for years. That’s the dis­turb­ing real­i­ty we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cle excerpts, includ­ing two reports by Human Rights Watch (HRW) detail­ing how clus­ter muni­tions haven’t just been wide­ly used by Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment but have specif­i­cal­ly been used in urban areas. That’s what HRW report­ed last week, right before the US made its announce­ment. And that’s also what HRW report­ed back in Octo­ber of 2014. Yes, these reports by HRW of the use of clus­ter muni­tions by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment against urban areas in sep­a­ratist-con­trolled cities goes back to the ear­ly months of the civ­il war.

So when we hear assur­ances that these new deliv­er­ies of clus­ter muni­tions are going to be a ‘game chang­er’ that will only be used in a high­ly respon­si­ble man­ner against con­cen­tra­tions of Russ­ian sol­diers, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that noth­ing is chang­ing. Well, ok, if the new muni­tions do indeed end up only get­ting used against Russ­ian sol­diers in non-urban areas and no civil­ians are caught in the cross-fire at all, that would be a change:

Politi­co

Ukraine says clus­ter muni­tions will be ‘game chang­er’ against Rus­sia

The con­tro­ver­sial weapons are wide­ly banned but Ukraine says it needs them to make up for a short­age in con­ven­tion­al artillery shells.

By Stu­art Lau
July 11, 2023 6:54 pm CET

VILNIUS — Kyiv sees clus­ter muni­tions as the next “game chang­er” in its bat­tle against Russ­ian forces, Ukraine’s defense min­is­ter said Tues­day.

Speak­ing on the side­lines of the NATO sum­mit, Olek­siy Reznikov reject­ed dis­ap­proval from some coun­tries and human­i­tar­i­an groups over the U.S. government’s deci­sion last week to send Ukraine the con­tro­ver­sial weapons.

“As we got in May 2022 155-mil­lime­ter artillery sys­tems, it became a game chang­er. In July, we got dif­fer­ent types of [Mul­ti­ple Launch Rock­et Sys­tems] it became [the] next game chang­er … And I hope that clus­ter muni­tions [become] a next game chang­er as weapon­ry or ammu­ni­tion for lib­er­a­tion of our tem­porar­i­ly occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries,” he said.

Reznikov insist­ed the use of these weapons would be lim­it­ed to non-urban areas with­in Ukraine’s ter­ri­to­ry. Ukraine’s part­ners will also be informed about the use and effect of the clus­ter weapons, he said.

...

Spain is among the most vocal oppo­nents of the deci­sion, with Defense Min­is­ter Mar­gari­ta Rob­les say­ing the “legit­i­mate defense of Ukraine … should not be car­ried out with clus­ter bombs.” The U.K. — a major arms sup­pli­er to Ukraine — has also expressed dis­com­fort over the U.S. deci­sion.

Clus­ter bombs are banned by many coun­tries but not the U.S., Ukraine and Rus­sia. The muni­tions drop explo­sive bomblets to kill ene­my sol­diers over a wide area, but unex­plod­ed muni­tions can pose a long-term threat to civil­ians.

Rus­sia has been using its own clus­ter muni­tions against Ukraine since its inva­sion over a year ago and Ukraine also has respond­ed with such weapons.

———–

“Ukraine says clus­ter muni­tions will be ‘game chang­er’ against Rus­sia” by Stu­art Lau; Politi­co; 07/11/2023

“Rus­sia has been using its own clus­ter muni­tions against Ukraine since its inva­sion over a year ago and Ukraine also has respond­ed with such weapons.”

Yes, the grim real­i­ty of these ‘game chang­ing’ pre­dic­tions is that clus­ter muni­tions have already been in use by both sides of this con­flict. The ‘game’ was ‘changed’ a while ago. The only real change is the vol­ume of clus­ter muni­tions in use.

And when it comes to Ukraine’s pledges that these muni­tions will only be used in non-urban areas, again, it’s not like this is a hypo­thet­i­cal future sce­nario. As the fol­low­ing Human Rights Watch (HRW) report from last week details, Ukraine has already been using clus­ter muni­tions in urban areas since the open­ing months of the war:

Human Rights Watch

Ukraine: Civil­ian Deaths from Clus­ter Muni­tions

New Research Details Ukrain­ian Use of Wide­ly Banned Weapon

July 6, 2023 12:15 AM EDT

Update: On June 7, 2023, the US Depart­ment of Defense announced that Pres­i­dent Joe Biden had signed a “deter­mi­na­tion” that the trans­fer of clus­ter muni­tions to Ukraine was nec­es­sary for the nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests of the Unit­ed States. He autho­rized the trans­fer of an unspec­i­fied num­ber of clus­ter muni­tions that have a greater than one per­cent unex­plod­ed ord­nance rate to the Ukrain­ian Armed Forces.

As of July 10, lead­ers from at least eleven coun­tries expressed con­cern over the deci­sion: Aus­tria, Bel­gium, Cam­bo­dia, Cana­da, Ger­many, Italy, Laos, New Zealand, Nor­way, Spain, and the Unit­ed King­dom. The Unit­ed Nations sec­re­tary-gen­er­al also made pub­lic his con­cerns.

Fol­low­ing the US announce­ment, Ukrain­ian Defense Min­is­ter Olek­sii Reznikov pre­sent­ed five prin­ci­ples that he said the armed forces would respect upon receiv­ing the clus­ter muni­tions: use them only in Ukraine; not use them in “urban areas (cities)” but only “in the fields where there is a con­cen­tra­tion of Russ­ian mil­i­tary”; keep a strict record of where the muni­tions were used; con­duct clear­ance activ­i­ties after the de-occu­pa­tion of the areas where the muni­tions were used; and report to part­ners on the use of the muni­tions and their effi­cien­cy.

* Ukrain­ian forces have used clus­ter muni­tions that caused deaths and seri­ous injuries to civil­ians. Russ­ian forces have exten­sive­ly used clus­ter muni­tions, caus­ing many civil­ian deaths and seri­ous injuries.
* Clus­ter muni­tions used by Rus­sia and Ukraine are harm­ing civil­ians now and will leave bomblets behind that will con­tin­ue to do so for many years.
* Both sides should imme­di­ate­ly stop using clus­ter muni­tions and not seek to obtain more of these indis­crim­i­nate weapons. The US should not trans­fer clus­ter muni­tions to Ukraine.

(Kyiv, July 6, 2023) – Ukrain­ian forces have used clus­ter muni­tions that caused numer­ous deaths and seri­ous injuries to civil­ians, Human Rights Watch said today. Russ­ian forces have exten­sive­ly used clus­ter muni­tions in Ukraine, killing many civil­ians and caus­ing oth­er seri­ous civil­ian harm.

New Human Rights Watch research found that Ukrain­ian clus­ter muni­tion rock­et attacks on Russ­ian-con­trolled areas in and around the city of Izium in east­ern Ukraine dur­ing 2022 caused many casu­al­ties among Ukrain­ian civil­ians. Both coun­tries should stop using these inher­ent­ly indis­crim­i­nate weapons, and no coun­try should sup­ply clus­ter muni­tions because of their fore­see­able dan­ger to civil­ians.

...

The US gov­ern­ment is report­ed­ly close to decid­ing whether to trans­fer stock­piled clus­ter muni­tions to Ukraine, which would require approval by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. Trans­fer­ring these weapons would inevitably cause long-term suf­fer­ing for civil­ians and under­mine the inter­na­tion­al oppro­bri­um of their use, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch vis­it­ed Izium and near­by vil­lages from Sep­tem­ber 19 to Octo­ber 9, 2022, to inves­ti­gate Russ­ian abus­es against Ukrain­ian civil­ians dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion, includ­ing arbi­trary deten­tion, tor­ture, and sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tions. Human Rights Watch inter­viewed over 100 peo­ple, includ­ing vic­tims of abus­es, wit­ness­es, emer­gency ser­vices per­son­nel, and health pro­fes­sion­als. Almost all of them said that they had seen frag­ments from sub­mu­ni­tions that had det­o­nat­ed around their homes dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion.

Ukrain­ian clus­ter muni­tion rock­et attacks in the city of Izium in 2022 killed at least eight civil­ians and wound­ed 15 more, Human Rights Watch said. The attacks occurred in Izium and sur­round­ing areas where Russ­ian forces had arrived in March, seized con­trol by ear­ly April, and remained in con­trol until ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. A Unit­ed Nations report also found that Ukrain­ian armed forces used clus­ter muni­tions in attacks on Izium between March and Sep­tem­ber 2022.

The total num­ber of civil­ians killed and wound­ed in the clus­ter muni­tion attacks that Human Rights Watch exam­ined is most like­ly greater. Russ­ian forces took many injured civil­ians to Rus­sia for med­ical care and many had not returned when Human Rights Watch vis­it­ed. An ambu­lance dri­ver said he and his col­leagues had reg­u­lar­ly trans­port­ed and treat­ed civil­ians, includ­ing chil­dren, with clus­ter muni­tion injuries dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion. He esti­mat­ed that he took at least one such case to the hos­pi­tal every day.

A man from the vil­lage of Hlynske said that in May 2022 he heard a clus­ter muni­tion rock­et strike near his home. “[S]uddenly I heard my father scream­ing, ‘I’ve been hit! I can’t move,’” he said. “I ran back and saw that he had fall­en on his knees but couldn’t move from the waist down, and there were many met­al pieces in him, includ­ing one stick­ing out of his spine and anoth­er in his chest. He had these small met­al pel­lets lodged in his hands and legs.” The man’s father received med­ical treat­ment but died a month lat­er after under­go­ing surgery.

Clus­ter muni­tions can be deliv­ered by air­craft or ground-launched mis­siles, pro­jec­tiles, and rock­ets. They open in mid-air and dis­perse dozens and even hun­dreds of small­er sub­mu­ni­tions, also called bomblets, over an area the size of a city block. Many sub­mu­ni­tions fail to explode on ini­tial impact, leav­ing duds that act like land­mines, pos­ing a threat to civil­ians for years and even decades.

Clus­ter muni­tions are com­pre­hen­sive­ly banned by the Con­ven­tion on Clus­ter Muni­tions, which 123 coun­tries have joined, although not Rus­sia or Ukraine. Regard­less, the use of clus­ter muni­tions in areas with civil­ians makes an attack indis­crim­i­nate in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law, and pos­si­bly a war crime.

Clus­ter muni­tions explained

Human Rights Watch exam­ined pho­tos tak­en by res­i­dents of 13 car­ri­er sec­tions or engines from Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets that had struck Izium dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion. Each 9M27K-series Ura­gan rock­et has a range of 10 to 35 kilo­me­ters and deliv­ers 30 sub­mu­ni­tions. Dur­ing the peri­od inves­ti­gat­ed, Ukrain­ian front­line posi­tions were always with­in that range. The posi­tion of car­ri­er sec­tions found still in the ground indi­cat­ed that they came from the direc­tion of Ukrain­ian posi­tions.

On June 6, Human Rights Watch wrote to Ukraine’s defense min­is­ter with a sum­ma­ry of its find­ings, a request for a meet­ing, and sev­er­al ques­tions. On June 22, the Defense Min­istry respond­ed in writ­ing, say­ing that “clus­ter muni­tions were not used with­in or around the city of Izium in 2022 when it was under Russ­ian occu­pa­tion.”

Under the Gene­va Con­ven­tions of 1949, applic­a­ble to the armed con­flict in Ukraine, all par­ties have an oblig­a­tion to inves­ti­gate and appro­pri­ate­ly pros­e­cute alleged war crimes by their forces or on their ter­ri­to­ry.

Ukraine has pub­licly asked to be sup­plied with clus­ter muni­tions. Sev­er­al US law­mak­ers have called for the Unite States, which is not a par­ty to the Con­ven­tion on Clus­ter Muni­tions, to trans­fer stock­piled clus­ter muni­tions to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Under US arms export rules, the Unit­ed States can only export clus­ter muni­tions that “after arm­ing do not result in more than one per­cent unex­plod­ed ord­nance across the range of intend­ed oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments.” This pro­vi­sion can be waived by the US pres­i­dent in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances to allow for trans­fers of clus­ter muni­tions with high­er fail­ure rates.

The clus­ter muni­tions that the Unit­ed States is con­sid­er­ing send­ing to Ukraine are more than 20 years old, scat­ter over a wide area, and have a noto­ri­ous­ly high fail­ure rate, mean­ing they could remain dead­ly for years. Their use in US com­bat oper­a­tions in 1991 and 2003 in Iraq result­ed in casu­al­ties among civil­ians and US mil­i­tary per­son­nel.

For the trans­fer, Ukraine would have to agree that the clus­ter muni­tions “will only be used against clear­ly defined mil­i­tary tar­gets and will not be used where civil­ians are known to be present or in areas nor­mal­ly inhab­it­ed by civil­ians.”

“The US gov­ern­ment should not be pro­vid­ing clus­ter muni­tions to any coun­try due to the fore­see­able and last­ing harm to civil­ians from these weapons,” Ware­ham said. “Trans­fer­ring clus­ter muni­tions dis­re­gards the sub­stan­tial dan­ger they pose to civil­ians and under­mines the glob­al effort to ban them.”

Human Rights Watch co-found­ed and chairs the Clus­ter Muni­tion Coali­tion, the glob­al coali­tion of non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions work­ing to pro­mote uni­ver­sal adher­ence to the 2008 Con­ven­tion on Clus­ter Muni­tions.

For addi­tion­al details about clus­ter muni­tion attacks in Izium, please see below.

Human Rights Watch report­ed in a May 2023 back­ground brief­ing that hun­dreds of Russ­ian clus­ter muni­tion attacks have been cred­i­bly alleged in at least 10 of Ukraine’s 24 regions since Russia’s full-scale inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2022. Human Rights Watch has doc­u­ment­ed hun­dreds of civil­ian casu­al­ties from Russ­ian clus­ter muni­tion attacks in the Cherni­hivs­ka, Donet­s­ka, Kharkivs­ka, Kher­son­s­ka, and Myko­laivs­ka regions. A Human Rights Watch report detailed the April 8, 2022 strike by a Russ­ian Tochka‑U bal­lis­tic mis­sile with a clus­ter muni­tion war­head on a crowd­ed train sta­tion in Kram­a­torsk that killed at least 58 civil­ians and injured over 100 oth­ers, one of the sin­gle dead­liest inci­dents for civil­ians.

Ukraine stock­piles clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets and used them in east­ern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. The New York Times report­ed that Ukrain­ian forces used Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets in an attack on Russ­ian-con­trolled Husariv­ka in Kharkivs­ka region in March 2022.

Ukrain­ian Clus­ter Muni­tion Attacks in Izium, March-July 2022

In Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber 2022, Human Rights Watch vis­it­ed 26 homes and apart­ment build­ings in and around the city of Izium that had been hit by clus­ter muni­tion attacks while the areas were under Russ­ian occu­pa­tion and found sub­mu­ni­tion rem­nants and frag­men­ta­tion pat­terns, as well as dam­age to win­dows, walls, gates, and neigh­bor­ing homes. In each loca­tion, res­i­dents iden­ti­fied near­by posi­tions that Russ­ian or Russ­ian-linked forces had been using at the time of the attack, indi­cat­ing that these forces were most like­ly the tar­get. Human Rights Watch was unable to deter­mine if any Russ­ian sol­diers were injured or killed in these attacks.

Five peo­ple who were not at home at the time of the attack said they had returned to find clus­ter muni­tion rem­nants and dam­age to their hous­es, includ­ing frag­men­ta­tion pat­terns that Human Rights Watch found to be con­sis­tent with the det­o­na­tion of frag­men­ta­tion sub­mu­ni­tions.

Four­teen peo­ple showed Human Rights Watch pieces of 9N210 or 9N235 frag­men­ta­tion sub­mu­ni­tions that they found in and around their homes after the attacks, includ­ing tail fins and frag­ments of chopped steel rod that the sub­mu­ni­tions dis­perse upon impact. Over a dozen more peo­ple accu­rate­ly described sub­mu­ni­tion frag­ments they said they had found. Nine­teen peo­ple said that they heard mul­ti­ple explo­sions in quick suc­ces­sion at the time of an attack, indi­cat­ing the det­o­na­tion of mul­ti­ple sub­mu­ni­tions deliv­ered in clus­ter muni­tions.

Human Rights Watch has iden­ti­fied most of the civil­ians killed in clus­ter muni­tions attacks that the researchers inves­ti­gat­ed in and around Izium. Pseu­do­nyms are used for peo­ple inter­viewed who did not wish to be iden­ti­fied.

Izium, March 2022

At least one Ukrain­ian civil­ian was killed and anoth­er injured in a clus­ter muni­tion attack on the left bank of the Siver­skiy Donets Riv­er in Izium on an unde­ter­mined evening in March 2022. Res­i­dents said Russ­ian forces had already seized con­trol of that part of the city. Two res­i­dents said they heard a series of explo­sions in the ear­ly after­noon. One of them, “Niko­laii,” said that his wife went to check on the fam­i­ly next door because she had seen them cook­ing in the yard. He did not know their names as they had only recent­ly moved in but said that the fam­i­ly con­sist­ed of a woman, her moth­er, around 50-years-old, and her young daugh­ter. When his wife went to the house, he said, she found the woman lying dead on the ground, cov­ered in blood. Niko­laii and his wife buried her in the gar­den and helped the woman’s moth­er, who was injured, get to the hos­pi­tal.

Human Rights Watch saw marks on the walls con­sis­tent with dam­age pat­terns caused by clus­ter muni­tion det­o­na­tions. Neigh­bors showed pieces of frag­men­ta­tion sub­mu­ni­tions they said they had col­lect­ed in the area after the attack. Human Rights Watch also saw the grave in the gar­den where neigh­bors said the woman was buried. Niko­laii and the oth­er neigh­bors did not know if the woman’s moth­er sur­vived or what hap­pened to the young daugh­ter, who was not injured in the attack.

Hlynske, April 2022

In the vil­lage of Hlynske, four kilo­me­ters north of Izium, a vil­lager named “Orest” said that, start­ing in April, his sin­gle-fam­i­ly home, where he lives with his moth­er, was repeat­ed­ly dam­aged by explod­ing sub­mu­ni­tions. He said that one morn­ing in April, at least 12 sub­mu­ni­tions hit his home when Russ­ian forces had come to ques­tion him and search the house. The clus­ter muni­tion attacks con­tin­ued “almost every day” while the area was under Russ­ian occu­pa­tion, but nei­ther he nor his moth­er were injured. He said he iden­ti­fied the incom­ing muni­tions by the type of explo­sions and rem­nants left from the attacks.

Human Rights Watch iden­ti­fied two Ura­gan-series rock­et car­go sec­tions designed to exclu­sive­ly car­ry 9N210 or 9N235 sub­mu­ni­tions. One was in his neighbor’s gar­den and anoth­er was still stuck in the ground at an angle that indi­cat­ed it was fired from the west.

Orest showed two frag­ments of black tail fins and pre­formed met­al frag­ments that he said he had col­lect­ed after one of the attacks. Human Rights Watch con­firmed that these rem­nants were from 9N210 or 9N235 sub­mu­ni­tions. He also showed dam­age to his walls and win­dows, which he said was caused by the attacks. The dam­age sig­na­tures were con­sis­tent with attacks by the 9N210 or 9N235 sub­mu­ni­tions.

Izium, April 5, 2022

A clus­ter muni­tion attack on or about April 5, 2022, injured eight peo­ple, includ­ing a two-year-old child, in a res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood on the left bank of the Siver­skiy Donets Riv­er in Izium. The attack site was approx­i­mate­ly 300 meters from Izium’s School No. 6, which Russ­ian forces had occu­pied from March to July, eight area res­i­dents said. One of the peo­ple injured, “Yura,” 28, lives in a sin­gle-sto­ry home next to a group of apart­ment build­ings. He said that he was fix­ing the exter­nal wall of his house around noon that day when he heard explo­sions very close by. He ran toward his door­way and just as he entered his home, a met­al frag­ment struck his left thigh. His son Ivan, two, was by the door, and met­al frag­ments cut his head, face, and shoul­der but the injuries were not seri­ous. Yura showed Human Rights Watch his and his son’s scars from the injuries.

“Anton,” 52, who lived in a neigh­bor­ing apart­ment build­ing, said he was work­ing in his garage about 100 meters away from the attack site, when he heard the explo­sions and ran toward his home. In between his apart­ment build­ing and Yura’s home, he saw six peo­ple lying injured on the ground. He rec­og­nized four, who were next to a bench where neigh­bors often gath­ered to talk. While wait­ing with them for an ambu­lance, he saw their injuries: 38-year-old Rita’s leg was ripped open; 61-year-old Volodymyr’s foot was par­tial­ly torn off; Olga, 59, had head and leg injuries as well as small cuts all over her body; and Natalia, 64, had a bro­ken leg. Two women he did not know were lying on the ground a few meters away, with cuts on var­i­ous parts of their bod­ies.

“Tetiana,” 62, and “Oksana,” 48, who lived in a near­by apart­ment build­ing, said they saw the after­math of the attack when they returned home short­ly after­ward. They pro­vid­ed sim­i­lar descrip­tions of the scene, types of injuries, and the names of those injured.

Anton said that at his home he found met­al frag­ments lodged in his win­dow frame and in an inte­ri­or mir­ror, as well as oth­er frag­ments. Human Rights Watch inspect­ed and iden­ti­fied these as com­ing from 9N210 or 9N235 sub­mu­ni­tions. Dam­age was vis­i­ble to the roofs, walls, and win­dows of five neigh­bor­ing build­ings, includ­ing those where Anton, Yura, Tetiana, and Oksana lived, con­sis­tent with the dam­age pat­terns caused by the det­o­na­tion of sub­mu­ni­tions.

Izium, May 9, 2022

At least three Ukrain­ian civil­ians were killed and anoth­er four injured in a clus­ter muni­tion attack on a neigh­bor­hood on the right bank of the Siver­skiy Donets Riv­er in Izium at about 7:30 p.m. on May 9, 2022. Three local res­i­dents who said they wit­nessed the attack said that Russ­ian forces were occu­py­ing the for­mer office of the SBU, the Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vice, less than 100 meters from where the sub­mu­ni­tions hit. Russ­ian armored vehi­cles were also parked through­out the area, they said.

One of the res­i­dents, “Daria,” said she was sit­ting on a bench out­side her apart­ment build­ing with her friend Sasha when she saw an incom­ing rock­et. She jumped up and ran into the base­ment, but her friend stayed on the bench. A neigh­bor­ing fam­i­ly was out­side using a makeshift out­door kitchen near the entrance to the build­ing, cook­ing with their friend Dasha, 36, and her eight-year-old daugh­ter. Daria said she heard explo­sions and then screams. Min­utes lat­er, sev­er­al sub­mu­ni­tions explod­ed on and around her and her neigh­bors’ homes.

As she came out of the base­ment she saw that a met­al frag­ment had pierced Dasha’s chest and real­ized that Dasha was dead. Three mem­bers of the neigh­bor­ing fam­i­ly were also injured, includ­ing the father, daugh­ter, and son who has cere­bral pal­sy and uses a wheel­chair. Sasha was hit in the head by a frag­ment and died.

“Lil­ia,” who said she was stand­ing out­side her home in the same build­ing at the time of the attack, said that a sub­mu­ni­tion hit the side of her home, dam­ag­ing the win­dow, and a frag­ment struck her in the right but­tock.

Human Rights Watch saw blood still smeared on the stairs lead­ing down to the base­ment, which res­i­dents said was where Dasha lived. Dam­age pat­terns caused by sub­mu­ni­tion det­o­na­tions were vis­i­ble on Daria’s build­ing and on anoth­er build­ing about 20 meters away.

A doc­tor who was work­ing at the time of the attack said that a 59-year-old neigh­bor was also injured in the attack and lat­er died. He said he treat­ed the neighbor’s wife, who was also injured and was trans­ferred to Rus­sia for fur­ther med­ical treat­ment.

Izium, May 17, 2022

On the morn­ing of May 17, 2022, in Izium on the left bank of the Siver­skiy Donets Riv­er, an Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et punched through the wall of the sin­gle-sto­ry home of “Ana­tolii,” killing his 44-year-old son “Volodymyr.”

Ana­tolii said he was out­side walk­ing just meters from his house when he heard mul­ti­ple explo­sions. He rushed into his house and then into his son’s room, where he saw a hole in the wall and in the floor. He said:

Half of my son’s body was in the hole in the floor and his legs were stick­ing out. His right arm had been ripped off and was in pieces. He was whim­per­ing and his eyes were cloudy. I begged my neigh­bor to take him to the hos­pi­tal, but he was too scared to, so I had to beg the Russ­ian sol­diers to take him. That cost us an hour-and-half. Dur­ing that time [Volodymyr] lost so much blood that he died.

A neigh­bor said she heard mul­ti­ple explo­sions and the thud of some­thing hit­ting a home very close by that morn­ing:

After the attack we all ran out­side to see what had hap­pened, I ran to [Anatolii]’s house because I heard scream­ing. I saw [Volodymyr]’s body in his room. He had been sleep­ing on the couch. He had a big met­al piece in his head and his right arm had been total­ly ripped off. We begged neigh­bors to take him to the hos­pi­tal, but they refused because they were too scared. It took too long to get him there. I think that’s why he died.

Human Rights Watch exam­ined Volodymyr’s room in Octo­ber 2022 – the fam­i­ly had sealed it off after his death. The rock­et motor sec­tion of an Ura­gan-series rock­et stuck deep in the ground below the floor­boards at an angle that indi­cates the weapon had been fired from the west into the city. The hole in the roof also indi­cat­ed that the weapon was trav­el­ing from west to east when it struck the house. Human Rights Watch also found rem­nants of the car­ri­er sec­tion of the rock­et with mark­ings indi­cat­ing that it con­tained explo­sive sub­mu­ni­tions.

Anoth­er of Anatolii’s neigh­bors, “Vadym,” said he heard mul­ti­ple explo­sions and then Ana­tolii came run­ning over, scream­ing for help. He said Volodymyr’s body and the couch had sunk into the hole cre­at­ed by part of the car­go sec­tion of the rock­et.

Vadym said this was one of at least two clus­ter muni­tion attacks on the area. He showed Human Rights Watch rem­nants con­sis­tent with 9N210 or 9N235 sub­mu­ni­tions, includ­ing black tail fins and pre­formed met­al frag­ments, as well as dam­age to his walls and win­dows, which he said was caused by the May 17 attack, and an ear­li­er attack on the morn­ing of May 5.

Vadym said that on May 5:

I was lying in bed when I heard a rum­ble, so I threw a blan­ket on my head and start­ed pray­ing. Then I heard the explo­sions and my moth­er, who was in the gar­den, came run­ning inside. The car­ri­er of the rock­et broke through the ceil­ing of our kitchen and split the kitchen table in half. I was just wait­ing for my death.

He heard six small­er explo­sions dur­ing the attack. When he came out of his room, he saw that one sub­mu­ni­tion had blown a hole through a met­al pot in the kitchen, which he showed to Human Rights Watch. Anoth­er met­al frag­ment had blown a hole through a tire in front of his house. He said his two-year-old dog was injured in the attack – a met­al frag­ment punc­tured her lung and he had to put her down.

Vadym and five oth­er neigh­bors said that sev­er­al Russ­ian mil­i­tary posi­tions and check­points were with­in 500 meters of their street.

Hlynske, May 30, 2022

A Ukrain­ian civil­ian died after a clus­ter muni­tion attack near the vil­lage of Hlynske on May 30, 2022. At the time, Russ­ian forces were based at a large farm in the vil­lage. “Andrii,” 81, lived about 250 meters from the occu­pied farm. His son “Olek­sii,” 49, said he was sit­ting in his father’s yard at around 4:30 p.m. that day and his father was in his field behind the house tend­ing to a cab­bage patch when he heard a whistling sound and then four explo­sions in quick suc­ces­sion. His father was struck by many met­al frag­ments, includ­ing in his back.

Olek­sii showed Human Rights Watch the frag­ments of six black tail fins from sub­mu­ni­tions that he said he found in the field and around the house after the attack. He said that Russ­ian forces came from the near­by farm with a medic and trans­port­ed Andrii to Izium’s Cen­tral Hos­pi­tal. They then took him by heli­copter to the Russ­ian city of Bel­go­rod, Olek­sii and his broth­er said, where he under­went mul­ti­ple surg­eries to remove met­al frag­ments from his hands, legs, and back. On June 30, Andrii under­went surgery again but died the next day. Human Rights Watch saw med­ical records from the Bel­go­rod hos­pi­tal con­firm­ing Andrii’s injuries and treat­ment there, plus his death cer­tifi­cate.

Izium, June 9, 2022

At least two Ukrain­ian civil­ians were injured in a clus­ter muni­tion attack at about 8 a.m. in Izium on June 9, 2022. The attack struck about two streets away from the site of the May 9 attack. Three res­i­dents who wit­nessed the attack said they noticed Russ­ian forces at the for­mer SBU head­quar­ters less than 100 meters away. Two of the wit­ness­es were injured in the attack and the third saw them lying on the ground out­side her home and pro­vid­ed first aid, then stopped a pass­ing car to take them to the hos­pi­tal.

“Anna” and her hus­band, “Vitalii,” said they were rid­ing bicy­cles when they saw a series of explo­sions in front of them. Vitalii, with blood stream­ing from his chest, fell to the ground. “He was scream­ing that we need­ed to get to the mil­i­tary or to some­one else who could help us,” Anna said. Anna was wound­ed in the leg.

Anna and Vitalii were trans­port­ed to the hos­pi­tal in anoth­er resident’s vehi­cle. At the hos­pi­tal, Russ­ian forces eval­u­at­ed Vitalii’s injuries and flew him by heli­copter to a hos­pi­tal in Rus­sia, where he under­went sev­er­al surg­eries to remove met­al frag­ments from his leg and back. His fin­ger, ribs, and lungs were also injured. Vitalii returned home three weeks lat­er. He showed Human Rights Watch his injuries, includ­ing scars from met­al frag­ments that he said were still embed­ded in his back, next to his spine.

July 2022

A woman liv­ing near Mount Kremenets, a mon­u­ment hill on the right bank of the Siver­skiy Donets Riv­er south of Izium, was killed in a clus­ter muni­tion attack at about 10 a.m. in late June or ear­ly July 2022. “Mykhai­lo,” in his 70s, who lives near Mount Kremenets, said that the area was attacked with clus­ter muni­tions mul­ti­ple times while Russ­ian forces con­trolled the area. Mykhai­lo said that one morn­ing, on a date he could not remem­ber, he was leav­ing his home to get bread for him­self and his neigh­bor, Sima, 76, when one attack occurred, “I was just exit­ing my gate when I heard five quick, loud explo­sions. Sima had been sit­ting in her gar­den. She was killed imme­di­ate­ly because one of the cas­settes [clus­ter muni­tions] explod­ed right next to her.”

Mykhai­lo showed Human Rights Watch two hous­es 10 meters away from Sima’s home, where he said Russ­ian forces had been based for sev­er­al months, includ­ing at the time of the attack. He said that imme­di­ate­ly after the attack, Russ­ian sol­diers from the neigh­bor­ing homes came to take Sima to an ambu­lance but told him they found she was already dead. Her home, as well as the walls and win­dows of the hous­es that Russ­ian forces had been using, showed dam­age con­sis­tent with the dam­age pat­terns of clus­ter muni­tion det­o­na­tions. Mykhai­lo described black tail fin frag­ments that he said he had found after the attack on the ground in her gar­den.

Izium, July 14, 2022

A Ukrain­ian woman was killed in a clus­ter muni­tion attack on July 14, 2022, at about 10:30 a.m. on the right bank of the Siver­skiy Donets Riv­er in Izium. Sev­er­al local res­i­dents, includ­ing the wom­an’s moth­er, said they wit­nessed the attack. All said they heard mul­ti­ple det­o­na­tions. One res­i­dent who lived about 150 meters away from where the woman was killed was out­side at the time: “The attack was very scary. Very loud. I was out­side and there were a lot of explo­sions. The wife of my ex-hus­band came and told me to hur­ry to get inside.”

“Her face and body were severe­ly muti­lat­ed by the explo­sion,” said a neigh­bor who saw the woman’s body. “We buried her in the cen­tral ceme­tery.” Human Rights Watch found dam­age sig­na­tures con­sis­tent with sub­mu­ni­tion impacts on the front side of the woman’s house and on oth­er hous­es near­by. Sig­nif­i­cant dam­age was vis­i­ble to the roof of the house near the front door that res­i­dents said was from the attack and where the woman and her dog were found dead.

Res­i­dents who also wit­nessed the attack said that Russ­ian forces were based for the dura­tion of the occu­pa­tion, includ­ing at the time of the attack, in a large build­ing in the res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood less than 150 meters on the same street where the woman was killed. Human Rights Watch observed spray-paint­ed mark­ings, such as the let­ter “Z” used by Russ­ian forces, on the street-fac­ing exte­ri­or doors that res­i­dents said Ukrain­ian forces paint­ed over when they retook Izium.

———-

“Ukraine: Civil­ian Deaths from Clus­ter Muni­tions”; Human Rights Watch; 07/06/2023

“Human Rights Watch vis­it­ed Izium and near­by vil­lages from Sep­tem­ber 19 to Octo­ber 9, 2022, to inves­ti­gate Russ­ian abus­es against Ukrain­ian civil­ians dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion, includ­ing arbi­trary deten­tion, tor­ture, and sum­ma­ry exe­cu­tions. Human Rights Watch inter­viewed over 100 peo­ple, includ­ing vic­tims of abus­es, wit­ness­es, emer­gency ser­vices per­son­nel, and health pro­fes­sion­als. Almost all of them said that they had seen frag­ments from sub­mu­ni­tions that had det­o­nat­ed around their homes dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion.”

Almost all of the over 100 peo­ple inter­viewed in Izium by HRW report­ed see­ing det­o­nat­ed clus­ter muni­tions in their areas. That was in the HRW report issued last week, right before the US for­mal­ly announced its deci­sion to allow the trans­fer. And while it was­n’t always clear which side fired the muni­tions, there were instances where the direc­tion of fire was very clear...thanks to the fact that the muni­tion car­ri­er sec­tions were at time also found stuck in the ground. And despite the evi­dence that the muni­tions were fired from Ukrain­ian con­trolled posi­tions, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment issued a for­mal denial that that were being used near Izium at all:

...
Human Rights Watch exam­ined pho­tos tak­en by res­i­dents of 13 car­ri­er sec­tions or engines from Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets that had struck Izium dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion. Each 9M27K-series Ura­gan rock­et has a range of 10 to 35 kilo­me­ters and deliv­ers 30 sub­mu­ni­tions. Dur­ing the peri­od inves­ti­gat­ed, Ukrain­ian front­line posi­tions were always with­in that range. The posi­tion of car­ri­er sec­tions found still in the ground indi­cat­ed that they came from the direc­tion of Ukrain­ian posi­tions.

On June 6, Human Rights Watch wrote to Ukraine’s defense min­is­ter with a sum­ma­ry of its find­ings, a request for a meet­ing, and sev­er­al ques­tions. On June 22, the Defense Min­istry respond­ed in writ­ing, say­ing that “clus­ter muni­tions were not used with­in or around the city of Izium in 2022 when it was under Russ­ian occu­pa­tion.”
...

Also note how, despite the US insis­tence that the clus­ter muni­tions it’s going to send have very low­er fail­ure rates, they are actu­al­ly 20 year old muni­tions with noto­ri­ous­ly high fail­ure rates:

...
Ukraine has pub­licly asked to be sup­plied with clus­ter muni­tions. Sev­er­al US law­mak­ers have called for the Unite States, which is not a par­ty to the Con­ven­tion on Clus­ter Muni­tions, to trans­fer stock­piled clus­ter muni­tions to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Under US arms export rules, the Unit­ed States can only export clus­ter muni­tions that “after arm­ing do not result in more than one per­cent unex­plod­ed ord­nance across the range of intend­ed oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments.” This pro­vi­sion can be waived by the US pres­i­dent in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances to allow for trans­fers of clus­ter muni­tions with high­er fail­ure rates.

The clus­ter muni­tions that the Unit­ed States is con­sid­er­ing send­ing to Ukraine are more than 20 years old, scat­ter over a wide area, and have a noto­ri­ous­ly high fail­ure rate, mean­ing they could remain dead­ly for years. Their use in US com­bat oper­a­tions in 1991 and 2003 in Iraq result­ed in casu­al­ties among civil­ians and US mil­i­tary per­son­nel.
...

Again, that was the report issued by HRW just last week. Mak­ing it mere­ly the lat­est HRW report detail­ing the use of clus­ter muni­tions in Ukraine since the civ­il war broke out near­ly a decade ago. For exam­ple, here’s a HRW report from Octo­ber of 2014, describ­ing more or less the same sce­nario described above: wide­spread reports of clus­ter muni­tions being used in civil­ian areas:

Human Rights Watch

Ukraine: Wide­spread Use of Clus­ter Muni­tions

Gov­ern­ment Respon­si­ble for Clus­ter Attacks on Donet­sk

Octo­ber 20, 2014 7:45PM EDT

(Berlin) – Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment forces used clus­ter muni­tions in pop­u­lat­ed areas in Donet­sk city in ear­ly Octo­ber 2014, Human Rights Watch said today. The use of clus­ter muni­tions in pop­u­lat­ed areas vio­lates the laws of war due to the indis­crim­i­nate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes.

Dur­ing a week-long inves­ti­ga­tion in east­ern Ukraine, Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed wide­spread use of clus­ter muni­tions in fight­ing between gov­ern­ment forces and pro-Russ­ian rebels in more than a dozen urban and rur­al loca­tions. While it was not pos­si­ble to con­clu­sive­ly deter­mine respon­si­bil­i­ty for many of the attacks, the evi­dence points to Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment forces’ respon­si­bil­i­ty for sev­er­al clus­ter muni­tion attacks on Donet­sk. An employ­ee of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed on Octo­ber 2 in an attack on Donet­sk that includ­ed use of clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets.

“It is shock­ing to see a weapon that most coun­tries have banned used so exten­sive­ly in east­ern Ukraine,” said Mark Hiz­nay, senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Ukrain­ian author­i­ties should make an imme­di­ate com­mit­ment not to use clus­ter muni­tions and join the treaty to ban them.”

...

To date, 114 coun­tries have joined the treaty that com­pre­hen­sive­ly bans clus­ter muni­tions because of the dan­ger they pose to civil­ians. Ukraine has not joined the treaty.

There is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong evi­dence that Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment forces were respon­si­ble for sev­er­al clus­ter muni­tion attacks on cen­tral Donet­sk in ear­ly Octo­ber, Human Rights Watch said. In addi­tion to evi­dence at the impact site indi­cat­ing that the clus­ter muni­tions came from the direc­tion of gov­ern­ment-con­trolled areas south­west of Donet­sk, wit­ness­es in that area said that they observed rock­ets being launched toward Donet­sk on the times and days when clus­ter muni­tions struck the city. A New York Times jour­nal­ist tracked down sev­er­al rock­ets in that area, which appeared to have mal­func­tioned and fall­en to the ground short­ly after they were launched, clear­ly estab­lish­ing the flight path of the rock­ets.

In the 12 inci­dents doc­u­ment­ed by Human Rights Watch, clus­ter muni­tions killed at least 6 peo­ple and injured dozens. The real casu­al­ty num­ber from use of clus­ter muni­tions in the con­flict is prob­a­bly high­er, Human Rights Watch said, since it has not inves­ti­gat­ed all alle­ga­tions of clus­ter muni­tion use. Also, in some cas­es, it was not pos­si­ble to deter­mine what weapon caused the death or injury because sev­er­al types of explo­sive weapons were used at the same time in the same area.

...

Human Rights Watch found evi­dence of sur­face-fired 220mm Ura­gan (Hur­ri­cane) and 300mm Smerch (Tor­na­do) clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets. Human Rights Watch researchers observed and pho­tographed the rem­nants of the car­go sec­tions of 16 Ura­gan and 6 Smerch clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets. Alto­geth­er, these 22 rock­ets would have con­tained 912 indi­vid­ual frag­men­ta­tion sub­mu­ni­tions. The total num­ber of clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets used so far in the con­flict is unknown.

The gov­ern­ment of Ukraine has nei­ther con­firmed nor denied using clus­ter muni­tions in east­ern Ukraine. It has not respond­ed to a let­ter sent by the Clus­ter Muni­tion Coali­tion in July or a let­ter sent by Human Rights Watch on Octo­ber 13.

Ukrain­ian forces should imme­di­ate­ly make a com­mit­ment to not use clus­ter muni­tions and to inves­ti­gate and hold account­able any per­son­nel respon­si­ble for fir­ing clus­ter muni­tions into pop­u­lat­ed areas. Ukraine should accede to the treaty ban­ning their use, Human Rights Watch said.

While not con­clu­sive, cir­cum­stances indi­cate that anti-gov­ern­ment forces might also have been respon­si­ble for the use of clus­ter muni­tions, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch also called on Rus­sia to make an imme­di­ate com­mit­ment to not use clus­ter muni­tions and to accede to the clus­ter muni­tions treaty.

“Fir­ing clus­ter muni­tions into pop­u­lat­ed areas is utter­ly irre­spon­si­ble and those who ordered such attacks should be held to account,” Hiz­nay said. “The best way for the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties to demon­strate a com­mit­ment to pro­tect civil­ians would be an imme­di­ate promise to stop using clus­ter muni­tions.”

Doc­u­ment­ed Clus­ter Muni­tion Use

Donet­sk

At least five Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets con­tain­ing sub­mu­ni­tions struck cen­tral Donet­sk in ear­ly Octo­ber 2014, based on evi­dence Human Rights Watch gath­ered. The evi­dence over­whelm­ing­ly indi­cates that these rock­ets were fired from gov­ern­ment-held areas near the vil­lage of Novomykhailiv­ka, south­west of Donet­sk.

At the time of the attacks rebel forces were in con­trol of Donet­sk, and gov­ern­ment and rebel forces were offi­cial­ly observ­ing a truce agreed on Sep­tem­ber 5. Nev­er­the­less active fight­ing con­tin­ued around the air­port, approx­i­mate­ly 6 kilo­me­ters from the clus­ter muni­tion impact sites. Rebel forces were also present around var­i­ous gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions in Donet­sk, and all the clus­ter muni­tion attacks in Donet­sk took place with­in one kilo­me­ter of a gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion appar­ent­ly in use by rebels. Rebel fight­ers on guard did not allow Human Rights Watch to enter the zone around the insti­tu­tion build­ing. Human Rights Watch observed a vehi­cle with a twin-bar­reled anti-air­craft can­non mount­ed on the back in the zone around the insti­tu­tion but has no evi­dence as to whether rebel forces were ever fir­ing from this loca­tion.

Rebel forces, as any par­ty to a con­flict, are required by the laws of war to take all fea­si­ble pre­cau­tions to avoid deploy­ing in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas. This does not how­ev­er change the indis­crim­i­nate, and unlaw­ful, nature of the use of clus­ter muni­tions in pop­u­lat­ed areas. Vio­la­tions of the laws of war by one par­ty to the con­flict do not jus­ti­fy vio­la­tions by the oth­er par­ty.

Short­ly after 5 p.m. on Octo­ber 2, sub­mu­ni­tions hit three areas south­west of Uni­ver­sitet­skaya street in cen­tral Donet­sk. The loca­tion of the sub­mu­ni­tions in three sep­a­rate areas indi­cates that they came from three dif­fer­ent rock­ets. Human Rights Watch pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed that rebel fight­ers were using a near­by dor­mi­to­ry, but did not deter­mine whether this was still the case at the time of the attack.

One pay­load of sub­mu­ni­tions struck the roof and sur­round­ing area of a super­mar­ket at 80A Unver­sitet­skaya street. Human Rights Watch iden­ti­fied 15 impact sites on the super­mar­ket roof and 9 impact sites adja­cent to the super­mar­ket. A larg­er crater on the north­ern cor­ner of the super­mar­ket was prob­a­bly caused by a piece of the weapon such as the rock­et motor.

Thir­ty-eight-year-old Lau­rent DuPasquier, a Swiss employ­ee with the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross who was stand­ing out­side the organization’s office in the same build­ing com­plex as the super­mar­ket, was killed dur­ing the attack in which clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets were used. An inves­ti­ga­tion has reached no final deter­mi­na­tion as to the exact caus­es of his death. Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed the pres­ence of two craters, about three meters apart, in front of the ICRC office, which appeared con­sis­tent with clus­ter sub­mu­ni­tion explo­sions. DuPasquier’s body was found between the two craters. Human Rights Watch also found pre-formed frag­ments of a 9N210 sub­mu­ni­tion and a piece of the ring that attach­es the sta­bi­liza­tion fins to the sub­mu­ni­tion about 20 meters from the ICRC office.

At about the same time as sub­mu­ni­tions hit the super­mar­ket, sub­mu­ni­tions from a sec­ond Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et struck a paved road just south­east of the build­ing at 94 Uni­ver­sitet­skaya street. Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed one large crater at the site and about a dozen craters near­by. The prox­im­i­ty of the craters indi­cates that the muni­tion had mal­func­tioned, open­ing up the car­go sec­tion of the rock­et lat­er than nor­mal and there­fore spread­ing the sub­mu­ni­tions over a much small­er area than nor­mal. A New York Times jour­nal­ist who exam­ined the area the day fol­low­ing the attack pho­tographed an unex­plod­ed sub­mu­ni­tion and numer­ous rem­nants of sub­mu­ni­tions, includ­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tic black plas­tic lin­er that holds the 2‑gram pre-formed frag­ments inside the 9N210 sub­mu­ni­tion.

Sub­mu­ni­tions from a third rock­et hit on and around the build­ing at 100B Uni­ver­sitet­skaya street. Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed at least three sub­mu­ni­tion impact craters close to the build­ing and dis­cov­ered the car­go sec­tion of an Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et, the part of the rock­et that holds the sub­mu­ni­tions before they are dis­persed, lodged into the ground among bush­es close to the south­east­ern side of the build­ing. Local res­i­dents said that many of the sub­mu­ni­tions had hit the roof, but Human Rights Watch was not able to access it.

Sub­mu­ni­tion impact craters close to build­ings in the three sites make it unlike­ly that the clus­ter muni­tion came from the west, north, or east. The large crater in the sec­ond loca­tion indi­cat­ed that the rock­et had come from the south­west. This is the only direc­tion con­sis­tent with all the impact craters, and there­fore points to use by Ukrain­ian forces.

...

Also on Octo­ber 2, sub­mu­ni­tions from anoth­er Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et struck the build­ing of the Moun­tain Res­cue Ser­vice, at 157 Artem street in Donet­sk. Human Rights Watch inspect­ed rem­nants of the rock­et out­side the build­ing, includ­ing one with the mark­ings for an Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et that deliv­ers 9N210 sub­mu­ni­tions, as well as sev­er­al impact craters of sub­mu­ni­tions. A part of the rock­et pen­e­trat­ed the roof, lodg­ing in the floor in a third-floor office.

In the morn­ing of Octo­ber 5, at least two Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets struck the fifth sub­dis­trict of the Kyivskyi dis­trict in cen­tral Donet­sk.

Sub­mu­ni­tions from one rock­et struck the inter­sec­tion between Raduzh­naya street and Zvyag­ilsko­go street.

Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed 11 sub­mu­ni­tion impact craters on Zvyag­ilsko­go street and frag­ment pat­terns on near­by fences con­sis­tent with the use of Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets. Human Rights Watch also found rem­nants of sub­mu­ni­tions at the site.

...

A sec­ond clus­ter muni­tion struck the res­i­den­tial area between Parkivs­ka street and Kosio­ra street, about 500 meters west of the first impact site. Human Rights Watch iden­ti­fied sev­er­al impact craters and local res­i­dents showed Human Rights Watch sub­mu­ni­tion rem­nants they had found after the attack. At least one civil­ian was injured in his leg by a frag­ment.

At the same time as those two attacks, there was an attack near­by on Kalmana street, set­ting at least two hous­es on fire. Human Rights Watch was not able to con­clu­sive­ly deter­mine that this attack was with clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets.

A video of a rock­et rem­nant lodged in the ground near 22 Kosio­ra street indi­cates that the clus­ter muni­tions were fired from the south­west. Sup­port­ing this find­ing, a local res­i­dent in Novomykhailiv­ka, south­west of Donet­sk, told a New York Times jour­nal­ist that he had seen rock­ets launched from a posi­tion south of vil­lage in the morn­ing of Octo­ber 5.

A New York Times jour­nal­ist tracked down a loca­tion south of Novomykhailiv­ka where res­i­dents had dis­cov­ered rock­et rem­nants in a field. Dur­ing a vis­it to the field, Human Rights Watch researchers and the jour­nal­ist dis­cov­ered the rem­nants of three Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets and one Smerch rock­et that had appar­ent­ly mal­func­tioned short­ly after launch. Two of the Ura­gan rock­ets still con­tained their pay­load of 9N210 sub­mu­ni­tions. The pres­ence of these mis­fired clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets clear­ly estab­lish­es the flight path of the attack, con­firm­ing that the rock­ets were fired form a gov­ern­ment-held area south of Novomykhailiv­ka.

Starobe­sheve

On the morn­ing on August 24, clus­ter muni­tions struck Starobe­sheve, a town about 35 kilo­me­ters south­east of Donet­sk. At the time of the attack gov­ern­ment forces appeared to be in con­trol of most of the town. Employ­ees at the town hos­pi­tal, which received the injured, said that the attack had killed 3 civil­ians and injured 17.

...

At the time of the August 24 attack, gov­ern­ment and rebel forces were bat­tling for con­trol of the town, which had been con­trolled by Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment forces up to that point. One local res­i­dent told Human Rights Watch that rebel forces start­ed push­ing out the gov­ern­ment forces on August 26 and 27. The pro-Russ­ian rebels announced on August 26, two days after the clus­ter muni­tions attack, that they had estab­lished con­trol of the town.

The rock­et tail sec­tion stuck in the ground in front of the local admin­is­tra­tion build­ing shows that the rock­et came from the south­east. With a max­i­mum range of 70 kilo­me­ters and the Ukraine-Rus­sia bor­der 30 kilo­me­ters away, the clus­ter muni­tions could have been fired from Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry south­east of Starobe­sheve, which was con­trolled by Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment forces at the time, or from Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry. The press cen­ter for the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties’ coun­tert­er­ror­ist oper­a­tion claimed at the time that the clus­ter muni­tions had been fired from Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry. Human Rights Watch was not able to con­clu­sive­ly attribute respon­si­bil­i­ty for this attack.

At a rebel base in the town, Human Rights Watch observed sev­en unex­plod­ed 9N235 sub­mu­ni­tions, the car­go sec­tion of an Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et rock­et with all the sub­mu­ni­tions still inside, and the car­go sec­tion from anoth­er Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et. Rebel fight­ers told Human Rights Watch that they had destroyed three Ura­gan rock­ets with sub­mu­ni­tions still inside on the day Human Rights Watch vis­it­ed, indi­cat­ing that there had been numer­ous attacks with Ura­gan rock­ets in the area. “The fields are full of these weapons,” one local res­i­dent said. “It is mak­ing it impos­si­ble for farm­ers to do their work.”

Human Rights Watch was not able to estab­lish who had fired the Ura­gan rock­ets and sub­mu­ni­tions col­lect­ed by the rebels or when they had been fired.

Maki­iv­ka

A local first respon­der in Maki­iv­ka, a rebel-con­trolled town bor­der­ing Donet­sk to the east, told Human Rights Watch that they had found rem­nants of sub­mu­ni­tions and rock­ets in at least three places.

He said that clus­ter muni­tions had killed two peo­ple on August 19 and 20 near a train sta­tion in the town and that they had found sub­mu­ni­tions rem­nants there. A sec­ond clus­ter muni­tion attack took place near a rebel check­point north­east of the town, sug­gest­ing a gov­ern­ment attack. Human Rights Watch observed the car­go sec­tion of an Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et at the check­point.

The third clus­ter muni­tion attack in Maki­iv­ka took place in the vil­lage of Khanzhenko­vo, which was also con­trolled by rebel forces at the time of the attack. Human Rights Watch vis­it­ed the vil­lage and con­firmed that it had been struck by clus­ter muni­tions. Local res­i­dents showed Human Rights Watch rem­nants of sub­mu­ni­tions col­lect­ed from the site.

Ilo­vaisk

Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed the use of clus­ter muni­tions out­side of Hruz­ka-Lomiv­ka, a small vil­lage out­side of Ilo­vaisk. The tail sec­tions of three Ura­gan rock­ets were lodged in the ground by a road approx­i­mate­ly two kilo­me­ters north­west of the vil­lage.

Human Rights Watch also accom­pa­nied a dem­i­ning team to a field west of Ilo­vaisk where they destroyed an unex­plod­ed sub­mu­ni­tion that had been found by a local res­i­dent.

A New York Times jour­nal­ist showed Human Rights Watch a pho­to of the tail sec­tion of a Smerch rock­et lodged in a shed on the north­west­ern edge of Ilo­vaisk. Local res­i­dents said that the rock­et had struck in the peri­od between August 25 and 29, when rebel forces were wrest­ing con­trol of the city from gov­ern­ment forces. The angle of the tail sec­tion indi­cat­ed that it came from the north­east.

Novosvitliv­ka, Luhan­sk province

In Novosvitliv­ka, a vil­lage in Luhan­sk province south of Luhan­sk city, Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed the use of at least six Smerch rock­ets and two uniden­ti­fied clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets.

Ukrain­ian forces entered the vil­lage on August 13, but were forced to retreat around August 28. The vil­lage suf­fered exten­sive dam­age from the fight­ing and more than 100 peo­ple from the vil­lage were killed in the fight­ing, accord­ing to med­ical per­son­nel at the local hos­pi­tal.

An employ­ee at the agri­cul­tur­al col­lege in Novosvitliv­ka said a clus­ter muni­tion rock­et struck behind the col­lege in the morn­ing around August 8–10. No stu­dents were there because of the sum­mer vaca­tion so nobody was injured. Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed dozens of sub­mu­ni­tion impact craters in the ground and found mul­ti­ple rem­nants from sub­mu­ni­tions. Human Rights Watch also found and marked an unex­plod­ed sub­mu­ni­tion in the grass behind the col­lege build­ings.

In the vil­lage, Human Rights Watch found a car­go sec­tion from an Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et and mul­ti­ple sub­mu­ni­tion impact craters, as well as a sta­bi­liza­tion fin from a sub­mu­ni­tion. The appar­ent angle of impact of both the Ura­gan rock­et car­go sec­tion and two of the sub­mu­ni­tion impact craters indi­cate that the attack orig­i­nat­ed from the north­west.

Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed rem­nants of at least six Smerch rock­ets that had land­ed in a field south­east of Novosvitliv­ka. Two unex­plod­ed 9N235 sub­mu­ni­tions were near­by. The tail sec­tions stuck in the ground showed that the rock­ets had come from the north­west, but Human Rights Watch was not able to deter­mine who fired the rock­ets because both gov­ern­ment and rebel forces were with­in the min­i­mum and max­i­mum range of the rock­ets.

...

———–

“Ukraine: Wide­spread Use of Clus­ter Muni­tions”; Human Rights Watch; 10/20/2014

“Dur­ing a week-long inves­ti­ga­tion in east­ern Ukraine, Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed wide­spread use of clus­ter muni­tions in fight­ing between gov­ern­ment forces and pro-Russ­ian rebels in more than a dozen urban and rur­al loca­tions. While it was not pos­si­ble to con­clu­sive­ly deter­mine respon­si­bil­i­ty for many of the attacks, the evi­dence points to Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment forces’ respon­si­bil­i­ty for sev­er­al clus­ter muni­tion attacks on Donet­sk. An employ­ee of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed on Octo­ber 2 in an attack on Donet­sk that includ­ed use of clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets.”

What role did the clus­ter bomb­ing of civil­ians in sep­a­ratist areas play a role in Ukraine’s inabil­i­ty peace­ful­ly resolve its civ­il war? It’s one of the many ques­tions sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignored about this con­flict. And yet it only took a week for HRW to doc­u­ment the wide­spread use of clus­ter muni­tions in the Donet­sk. And this was Octo­ber of 2014, just months into the civ­il war. As HRW’s Mark Hiz­nay put it, “It is shock­ing to see a weapon that most coun­tries have banned used so exten­sive­ly in east­ern Ukraine...Ukrainian author­i­ties should make an imme­di­ate com­mit­ment not to use clus­ter muni­tions and join the treaty to ban them.”

And note how the death of the Red Cross employed did­n’t hap­pen when this indi­vid­ual was out in a bat­tle­field. It hap­pened as they were stand­ing out­side the Red Cross’s office in the same build­ing com­plex as a super­mar­ket that was struck in a clus­ter bomb attack on a civil­ian area of Donet­sk:

...
“It is shock­ing to see a weapon that most coun­tries have banned used so exten­sive­ly in east­ern Ukraine,” said Mark Hiz­nay, senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Ukrain­ian author­i­ties should make an imme­di­ate com­mit­ment not to use clus­ter muni­tions and join the treaty to ban them.”

...

At least five Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets con­tain­ing sub­mu­ni­tions struck cen­tral Donet­sk in ear­ly Octo­ber 2014, based on evi­dence Human Rights Watch gath­ered. The evi­dence over­whelm­ing­ly indi­cates that these rock­ets were fired from gov­ern­ment-held areas near the vil­lage of Novomykhailiv­ka, south­west of Donet­sk.

At the time of the attacks rebel forces were in con­trol of Donet­sk, and gov­ern­ment and rebel forces were offi­cial­ly observ­ing a truce agreed on Sep­tem­ber 5. Nev­er­the­less active fight­ing con­tin­ued around the air­port, approx­i­mate­ly 6 kilo­me­ters from the clus­ter muni­tion impact sites. Rebel forces were also present around var­i­ous gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions in Donet­sk, and all the clus­ter muni­tion attacks in Donet­sk took place with­in one kilo­me­ter of a gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion appar­ent­ly in use by rebels. Rebel fight­ers on guard did not allow Human Rights Watch to enter the zone around the insti­tu­tion build­ing. Human Rights Watch observed a vehi­cle with a twin-bar­reled anti-air­craft can­non mount­ed on the back in the zone around the insti­tu­tion but has no evi­dence as to whether rebel forces were ever fir­ing from this loca­tion.

Rebel forces, as any par­ty to a con­flict, are required by the laws of war to take all fea­si­ble pre­cau­tions to avoid deploy­ing in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas. This does not how­ev­er change the indis­crim­i­nate, and unlaw­ful, nature of the use of clus­ter muni­tions in pop­u­lat­ed areas. Vio­la­tions of the laws of war by one par­ty to the con­flict do not jus­ti­fy vio­la­tions by the oth­er par­ty.

Short­ly after 5 p.m. on Octo­ber 2, sub­mu­ni­tions hit three areas south­west of Uni­ver­sitet­skaya street in cen­tral Donet­sk. The loca­tion of the sub­mu­ni­tions in three sep­a­rate areas indi­cates that they came from three dif­fer­ent rock­ets. Human Rights Watch pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed that rebel fight­ers were using a near­by dor­mi­to­ry, but did not deter­mine whether this was still the case at the time of the attack.

One pay­load of sub­mu­ni­tions struck the roof and sur­round­ing area of a super­mar­ket at 80A Unver­sitet­skaya street. Human Rights Watch iden­ti­fied 15 impact sites on the super­mar­ket roof and 9 impact sites adja­cent to the super­mar­ket. A larg­er crater on the north­ern cor­ner of the super­mar­ket was prob­a­bly caused by a piece of the weapon such as the rock­et motor.

Thir­ty-eight-year-old Lau­rent DuPasquier, a Swiss employ­ee with the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross who was stand­ing out­side the organization’s office in the same build­ing com­plex as the super­mar­ket, was killed dur­ing the attack in which clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets were used. An inves­ti­ga­tion has reached no final deter­mi­na­tion as to the exact caus­es of his death. Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed the pres­ence of two craters, about three meters apart, in front of the ICRC office, which appeared con­sis­tent with clus­ter sub­mu­ni­tion explo­sions. DuPasquier’s body was found between the two craters. Human Rights Watch also found pre-formed frag­ments of a 9N210 sub­mu­ni­tion and a piece of the ring that attach­es the sta­bi­liza­tion fins to the sub­mu­ni­tion about 20 meters from the ICRC office.

At about the same time as sub­mu­ni­tions hit the super­mar­ket, sub­mu­ni­tions from a sec­ond Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­et struck a paved road just south­east of the build­ing at 94 Uni­ver­sitet­skaya street. Human Rights Watch doc­u­ment­ed one large crater at the site and about a dozen craters near­by. The prox­im­i­ty of the craters indi­cates that the muni­tion had mal­func­tioned, open­ing up the car­go sec­tion of the rock­et lat­er than nor­mal and there­fore spread­ing the sub­mu­ni­tions over a much small­er area than nor­mal. A New York Times jour­nal­ist who exam­ined the area the day fol­low­ing the attack pho­tographed an unex­plod­ed sub­mu­ni­tion and numer­ous rem­nants of sub­mu­ni­tions, includ­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tic black plas­tic lin­er that holds the 2‑gram pre-formed frag­ments inside the 9N210 sub­mu­ni­tion.

...

A New York Times jour­nal­ist tracked down a loca­tion south of Novomykhailiv­ka where res­i­dents had dis­cov­ered rock­et rem­nants in a field. Dur­ing a vis­it to the field, Human Rights Watch researchers and the jour­nal­ist dis­cov­ered the rem­nants of three Ura­gan clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets and one Smerch rock­et that had appar­ent­ly mal­func­tioned short­ly after launch. Two of the Ura­gan rock­ets still con­tained their pay­load of 9N210 sub­mu­ni­tions. The pres­ence of these mis­fired clus­ter muni­tion rock­ets clear­ly estab­lish­es the flight path of the attack, con­firm­ing that the rock­ets were fired form a gov­ern­ment-held area south of Novomykhailiv­ka.
...

And as these HRW reports make clear, the fir­ing of these clus­ter muni­tions isn’t just a poten­tial war crime. It’s also the ori­gin for a kind of mys­tery every time one of these muni­tions is used over a civil­ian area. Or used in a non-pop­u­lat­ed area with lots of failed sub­mu­ni­tions that will be ter­ror­iz­ing the pop­u­lace for years to come. A ‘who dun­nit?’ mur­der mys­tery. Or at least that’s the case when both sides are using the same kinds of muni­tions. But with the deliv­ery of US clus­ter muni­tions, these mur­der mys­ter­ies may not be quite so mys­te­ri­ous.

Of course, as these HRW reports also make clear, these are mur­der mys­ter­ies that almost no one seems to care about solv­ing. A ‘Who dun­nit? Who cares?’ class of mur­der mys­tery. And that’s pre­sum­ably what we’re going to see a lot more of as these US-built muni­tions are deliv­ered and used in ways that can’t be excused but can def­i­nite­ly be ignored.