Deadly Munitions Maiming and Killing in Ukraine

According to the latest Cluster Munitions Monitor, more than 1,200 people are known to have been killed or maimed in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The true figure is likely much higher, but it could be years before an accurate number is known, said Loren Persi, team lead for the Cluster Munition Monitor report.  

Submunitions - or bomblets, as they are also known - cause casualties and damage through blast impact, their incendiary effect and fragmentation. According to UNIDIR, a single attack can involve thousands of individual explosive units which are usually spread over hundreds of square metres. 

“These munitions can be air-delivered or surface-launched, and can be used against armour, materiel and personnel,” UNIDIR explained, although it is “very clear…that civilians continue to bear the brunt” of suffering from the cluster munition remnants, Mr. Persi insisted.

As in previous years, children accounted for a high proportion (42 per cent) of casualties from the weapons in 2024, “which they often find interesting, think are toys or come across in play or on the way to school or when working in fields”.

UN News

Anton Skyba for The Globe and Mail

A man walks in front of a crater left by an explosion during escalating conflict in Kyiv, Ukraine.

 

Over 1,200 civilians have been killed or injured in Ukraine as a result of Russia's military deploying them since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That utilization of the deadly bombs which release bomblets with the intention of scattering the deadly danger of the assaults in as wide an area as possible, has seen Ukraine register the greatest number of recorded cluster munition casualties annually worldwide, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition, in issuing its annual report.

 

The globally banned weapons have been used 'extensively', while Ukraine as well has made use of the weapon, facing Russian accusations of Ukraine deploying them inside Russian borders. The lunacy of such an assertion is self-evident, but Vladimir Putin cannot recognize the cruel irony in his self-entitled opinion to use these deadly weapons everywhere in Ukraine, bridling with indignation that Ukraine has returned the compliment. 

 

In 2024 some 193 cluster munition casualties were recorded in Ukraine, while globally there were 324 such casualties reported. The figure of 1,200 casualties caused in Ukraine by the cluster bombs is acknowledged to be a vast understatement. Scattering bomblets over a wide area, cluster munitions lend themselves to being dropped from planes or fired from artillery before exploding. 

 

Distinctive marks from a cluster munition in the roof of a car next to a playground in Kharkiv  Joel Gunter, BBC

 

Many of the bombs fail to explode on impact, a scenario that is not uncommon and which leads to unexploded landmines littering the landscape posing a lasting threat in the presence of bombs that can explode at any time over the years, injuring or killing the unaware, from farmers to curious children. 112 states worldwide signed on to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibiting the use of cluster bombs, their transfer, production and storage. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are signatories.  

The international Convention on Cluster Munitions defines cluster munition as “a conventional munition that is designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions, each weighing less than 20 kilograms.” Thus, cluster munitions consist of a dispenser and submunitions loaded onto it. Submunitions are essentially grenades with tail fins or a streamer to help them land in the right orientation.

The dispenser releases the submunitions above the target, and the submunitions spread out as they fall. The submunitions explode when they hit the ground affecting a much larger area than a single, concentrated explosion. The picture below shows a dispenser that has stuck in the ground after dispersing its submunitions. The submunitions would be stacked in the rails. 

Center for Strategic &International Studies  

Also not a party to the treaty, the United States produces its own arsenals of cluster bombs, and decided to transfer U.S.-made cluster munitions to Kyiv, in 2023. There have been at least seven separate shipments going out from the U.S. to Ukraine. The Cluster Munition Coalition is  troubled and has warned of setbacks to the establishment of new international norms whereby the use of cluster munitions are stigmatized. In March of 2025, Lithuania became the first country to withdraw from the treaty.

 

In Ukrainian-controlled territory, submunitions with Korean language markings have been found, but it is unclear whether they were used by the North Korean forces fighting alongside Russians in the war on Ukraine, or whether they had been acquired from North Korea for the directly purposeful use by Russia.  

"Ukraine would not be using these munitions in some foreign land. This is their country they're defending."

"These are their citizens they're protecting. And they are motivated to use any weapons system they have in a way that minimizes risk to those citizens."

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan