A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles. Other cluster munitions are designed to destroy runways or electric power transmission lines.
The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System is a tactical ballistic missile designed and manufactured by the US defense company Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), and later Lockheed Martin through acquisitions. It uses solid propellant, is 13 feet (4.0 m) high and 24 inches (610 mm) in diameter, and the longest range variants can fly up to 190 miles (300 km). The missiles can be fired from the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
The M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System is an American armored self-propelled multiple launch rocket system.
The RPO-A Shmel is a man-portable, single-use, rocket-assisted thermobaric weapon. While its name directly translates to flamethrower, the RPO-A Shmel is more accurately described as a thermobaric weapon. The Shmel is designed, produced and exported by the Russian Federation and previously by the Soviet Union. It entered service with the Soviet Armed Forces at the end of the 1980s as the successor for the RPO Rys.
OTR-21 Tochka is a Soviet tactical ballistic missile. Its GRAU designation is 9K79; its NATO reporting name is SS-21 Scarab. One missile is transported per 9P129 vehicle and raised prior to launch. It uses an inertial guidance system.
The 9K720 Iskander is a mobile short-range ballistic missile system produced and deployed by the Russian military. They travel at a terminal hypersonic speed of 2100–2600 m/s and can reach an altitude of 50 km as they range up to 500 km. The missile systems (Искандер-М) were intended to replace by 2020 the supposedly-obsolete OTR-21 Tochka systems in the Russian military.
The Donetsk People's Republic is an internationally unrecognized republic of Russia, comprising the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, with its capital in Donetsk. The DPR was created by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014, and it initially operated as a breakaway state until it was annexed by Russia in 2022.
Russian separatist forces in Ukraine, primarily the People's Militias of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), were pro-Russian paramilitaries in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. They were under the overall control of the Russian Federation, and were also referred to as Russian proxy forces. They were active during the war in Donbas (2014–2022), the first stage of the Russo-Ukrainian War. They then supported the Russian Armed Forces against the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the 2022 Russian invasion. In September 2022, Russia annexed the DPR and LPR, and began integrating the paramilitaries into its armed forces. They are designated as terrorist groups by the government of Ukraine.
The war in Donbas, or Donbas war, was a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War in the Donbas region of Ukraine. The war began 12 April 2014, when a fifty-man commando unit headed by Russian citizen Igor Girkin seized Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast. The Ukrainian military launched an operation against them. It continued until it was subsumed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Second Battle of Donetsk Airport was an engagement between the Ukrainian military and Russian military and its proxy forces of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) during the War in Donbas. An earlier battle in May 2014 had left Donetsk International Airport in Ukrainian control. Despite a ceasefire agreement, the Minsk Protocol, in place since 5 September 2014, fighting broke out between the warrying parties on 28 September 2014.
The Volnovakha bus attack was an attack on a highway checkpoint near the village of Buhas outside of the Volnovakha municipality in the Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on 13 January 2015. It resulted in the deaths of 12 passengers of an intercity bus and injuries to 18 others in the area. The attack was the largest single loss of life since the signing of the Minsk Protocol in September 2014, which attempted to halt the War in Donbass. The incident has been labeled an "act of terror" by both the Ukrainian authorities as well as the rebels.
The Barda missile attacks was a series of three air attacks on the city of Barda, as well as the villages of Əyricə and Qarayusifli in the same district, in Azerbaijan during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. The attacks involved BM-30 Smerch missiles with cluster warheads, and resulted in 27 civilian deaths.
On 8 April 2022, a Russian missile strike hit the railway station of the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The strike killed 63 civilians and wounded 150. Russian authorities denied responsibility and blamed the attack on Ukraine.
The most significant using of incendiary weapons were used a number of times during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Russians were accused of using white phosphorus bombs multiple times; in the Battle of Kyiv and against Kramatorsk in March 2022, against dug-in defenders at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol in May 2022, and in Marinka over the 2022 Christmas holiday. White phosphorus is a toxic chemical, and exposure to vapors leads to long-term ailments of the body, up to permanent disfigurement and death through organ failure.
The ZALA Lancet is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and loitering munition developed by the Russian company ZALA Aero Group for the Russian Armed Forces. It was first unveiled in June 2019 at the ARMY-2019 military expo in Moscow. It is a further development of the ZALA Kub-BLA loitering munition.
Olga Sergeevna Kachura was a Ukrainian pro-Russian separatist in the Russo-Ukrainian War, colonel of the Donetsk People's Republic People's Militia and a commander of a rocket artillery divizion. She was known under the call sign Korsa.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military have carried out deliberate attacks against civilian targets and indiscriminate attacks in densely-populated areas. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says the Russian military exposed the civilian population to unnecessary and disproportionate harm by using cluster bombs and by firing other weapons with wide-area effects into civilian areas, such as missiles, heavy artillery shells and multiple launch rockets. As of 2024, the attacks had resulted in the documented deaths of between 10,000 and 16,500 civilians. On 22 April 2022, the UN reported that of the 2,343 civilian casualties it had been able to document, it could confirm 92.3% of these deaths were as a result of the actions of the Russian armed forces.
The battle of Pisky was a series of military engagements for control of the ghost town of Pisky, located just outside of the city of Donetsk, between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the allied separatist Donetsk People's Republic during the battle for Donbas of the eastern Ukraine campaign. Russian and separatist forces fully captured Pisky on 24 August 2022.
This timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine covers the period from 8 April 2022, when the area of heavy fighting shifted to the south and east of Ukraine, to 28 August 2022, the day before Ukraine announced the start of its Kherson counteroffensive.
The use of cluster munitions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–present) has been recorded by a number of eyewitnesses and journalists, as well as representatives of the UN, humanitarian and public organizations. In particular, the head of the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet, reported on March 30 at least 24 cases since the beginning of the invasion. As of July 1, hundreds of attacks by Russian forces with cluster munitions have already been recorded in the settlements of the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson and Chernihiv regions. 215 civilians are known to have been killed in these shellings and 474 injured, many of which may go unreported. Both Russia as well as Ukraine have used cluster munitions during the conflict, however, Russian use has been extensive while Ukrainian use has been more limited.
