Ukraine has targeted a village in Russia’s Belgorod Region with cluster munitions, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said.
At least three cluster munitions were employed by the Kiev forces during a large-scale attack on the settlement of Zhuravlevka, Gladkov wrote on Telegram on Saturday.
According to the governor, 21 artillery shells and ten mortar rounds were also fired at the village. It was also targeted with a single kamikaze drone.
There were no casualties or damage in Zhuravlevka as a result of the shelling, he said.
Smaller artillery, mortar and drone attacks targeted at least a dozen other settlements in Belgorod Region on the same day, Gladkov wrote.
In the village of Ilek-Penkovka, 12 households were affected by an explosion, with the facades of buildings being damaged and windows shattered, he said, adding that injuries had been avoided.
The US announced the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine earlier this month, with President Joe Biden describing it as a stopgap measure that was necessary due to a shortage of regular artillery rounds among Kiev’s Western backers.
The controversial shells, which contain multiple bomblets that are dispersed over a large area, have been banned in more than 100 countries. However, neither Ukraine, the US, nor Russia are signatories of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).
Washington admitted that it was aware of the increased risk posed by cluster munitions for the civilian population, but claimed that Kiev had pledged to deploy them responsibly and steer clear of densely populated areas.
On Thursday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed that the Ukrainian forces had begun using US-supplied cluster munitions on the battlefield. They were doing so “quite effectively,” he claimed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin noted last week that the US itself had earlier branded the use of cluster munitions “a crime,” saying this was exactly how he regarded the delivery of such weapons to Kiev by Washington.
The Russian military has a “sufficient” stock of cluster munitions, which it can also put to use in a tit-for-tat response to such weapons being deployed by Ukraine, the president warned.
Kiev strikes ammunition depot in Crimea – official
A Ukrainian drone strike has resulted in an explosion at an ammunition depot in the central part of the Crimean peninsula, Governor Sergey Aksyonov said on Saturday. According to preliminary information, the incident has not resulted in any casualties, he added.
Writing on Telegram, Aksyonov said the detonation had taken place in the Krasnogvardeysky district. “A decision has been made to evacuate the population within a 5km radius from the site of the emergency and place them in temporary accommodation facilities,” he added.
The governor stated that the authorities had also suspended rail traffic in the area in order to “minimize risks,” while expressing hope that the emergency would be dealt with quickly.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have confirmed the strikes, claiming that they “had destroyed an oil depot and Russian military warehouses” in the area.
Crimea has repeatedly been targeted by Ukrainian drone and missile attacks since Moscow launched its military operation against Kiev over a year ago. On Thursday, Aksyonov said a Ukrainian UAV raid on the peninsula had killed a teenage girl and damaged several administrative buildings.
Earlier this week, a sea drone strike on the Crimean Bridge – which Russia called a Ukrainian terrorist attack – damaged one section of the roadway and claimed the lives of a married couple from Belgorod Region, as well as injuring their 14-year-old daughter.
Kiev stopped short of claiming responsibility, but celebrated the incident, while Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky later called the bridge a legitimate military target.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned the raid as a “terrorist attack” that was pointless from a military standpoint, adding that the bridge has not been used for transporting military materials for a long time. In the aftermath of the incident, Moscow launched several “retaliatory strikes” on targets in Ukrainian port cities.
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