Ukraine war crimes?

Cluster munitions, vacuum bombs, attacks on civilians - what Putin is accused of

Created: 03/03/2022 13:18

By: Stephanie Munk

Extremely deadly weapons, attacks on civilians and residential areas: Russia is said to be committing serious war crimes in the Ukraine war.

Vladimir Putin is already being threatened with harsh consequences.

Kyiv/Moscow - In the Ukraine war*, Russia has been bombing Ukraine for a week, according to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Vladimir Putin's* war of aggression on the neighboring country has already "killed or injured hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians".

And Blinken expects things to get worse: "We've certainly seen in the past that one of Russia's methods of war is to be absolutely brutal and try to intimidate a country's citizens," the US Secretary of State said on Wednesday , March 2, at the United Nations.

The suffering in Ukraine will increase in the coming days.

Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects are considered war crimes, regulated in Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

And it is precisely such war crimes that the USA and several human rights organizations accuse Russia of: The Russian military is attacking buildings and cities that "are not military targets," denounced US Secretary of State Blinken.

Ukraine war: Putin is accused of war crimes - "Extremely deadly weapons"

The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, criticized before the United Nations that Russia is bringing weapons into the country that violate international law: "We have seen videos of Russian armed forces bringing exceptionally deadly weapons into Ukraine that have nothing on the battlefield have to look for.

These include cluster munitions and vacuum bombs – which are banned under the Geneva Convention,” the US ambassador explained.

Cluster munitions are outlawed in most countries around the world.

In 2010, the Convention on Cluster Munitions came into force, an international treaty that neither Russia nor Ukraine have joined.

It consists of projectiles that shatter while still in the air, releasing a variety of smaller projectiles and therefore can cause particularly brutal damage.

Conflict researchers and human rights organizations denounce the use of cluster munitions against the Ukrainian population in the Ukraine war.

Attacks of this type by Russia on Ukrainian cities have reportedly killed several people, including children, in the past few days.

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that four civilians were killed and ten injured when a cluster bomb fell in front of a clinic in the city of Wuhledar in Donetsk Oblast.

Ukraine War: Russia's vacuum bombs destroy everything around them

According to the Geneva Convention, vacuum bombs, also known as thermobaric bombs, are prohibited.

Several rocket launchers capable of detonating such bombs have already been sighted on the Ukrainian border.

Russian tanks transported the particularly brutal weapon to the neighboring country.

According to 

 , the explosion creates an overpressure effect that ends in a huge detonation and is extremely destructive due to the shock waves that are created.

A single shot could destroy several blocks of flats, they say.

, a 2000 CIA report

said: “Those in the vicinity of the explosion will be wiped out.

Those on the edge of the blast are likely to suffer many internal (...) injuries.”

According to Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova, Russia detonated a vacuum bomb in Ukraine on Monday, February 28.

"They used a vacuum bomb today, which is prohibited under the Geneva Convention," Oksana Markarova told 

 journalists after a meeting at the White House, according to British newspaper

However, independent sources have not confirmed this.

The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj* also spoke of a vacuum bomb which is said to have exploded in Kyiv, but the information has not been independently verified either.

War in Ukraine: Do Putin face consequences for war crimes?

The International Criminal Court has already started investigations into possible war crimes in Ukraine.

Evidence collection "has now begun," Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said.

He received the support of 39 countries for his investigations, including all EU member states, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand and several countries in Latin America.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock* (Greens) spoke out in favor of a commission of inquiry into Ukraine "to investigate all human rights violations that Russia has committed since the beginning of its military aggression," said Baerbock in a video message on Thursday, March 3, at the Session of the UN Human Rights Council.

"Serious violations of human rights must be prosecuted."

War in Ukraine: British justice minister warns Putin about jail cell in The Hague

British Justice Minister Dominic Raab also warned Russian President Putin about the legal consequences of war crimes in Ukraine.

"They need to know that there is a real chance that they will face the dock of a court in The Hague and a prison cell," Raab told

newspaper .

Britain will support the International Criminal Court in collecting evidence and tracking down suspected war criminals.

These threats will probably not have any effect, at least in the short term: A representative of the US Department of Defense fears that the intensity of the attacks will probably increase in the next few days while Russian troops try to encircle cities in Ukraine.

"The concern is that the more aggressive they become, they become less precise," the Pentagon official said.

This article shows all current maps and graphics related to the Ukraine War.