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Ukraine has been using cluster munitions for some time now. Now, for the first time, a video is said to clearly show a HIMARS strike against Russian soldiers.
Burtschak – For the first time, a Ukrainian HIMARS attack with new US cluster munitions has been captured on video. It was aimed at at least seven soldiers and possibly a vehicle of the troops of Wladimir Putin wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Ukraine Battle Map, a site based on open-source intelligence on the Ukraine War specialized account, about the video. The attack occurred near the front line near Burchak in the Zaporizhia region, it said. The recording has not yet been independently verified.
In the clip, you can see several military vehicles, including a truck, turning onto a dirt road that is wooded on both sides. Then the shot changes perspective, possibly jumping forward in time and looking from the other direction at the small patch of woodland. There, several soldiers are standing in a circle. Then the perspective changes again and zooms out of the action. Especially to the right, but also to the left of the section just viewed with the men and in the middle of it, countless small clouds of smoke sprout from the ground. After another change of perspective, the transport of wounded people can be seen.
Ukraine war: Video is said to show Ukrainian HIMARS cluster munitions in action for the first time
Like the United States and Russia, Ukraine has not signed the August 2010 Cluster Munition Convention, which bans this type of munition. According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), both Russian and Ukrainian armed forces have been using their old stocks of Soviet cluster munitions since the beginning of the Ukraine war in February 2022, with Russia doing so more intensively and also attacking civilian targets with them.
The reason for their ban is the usually high dud rate of cluster munitions, which pose a great danger to civilians. They consist of a projectile filled with many smaller explosive devices. The projectile explodes in the air above a target and releases these submunitions. Ideally, all of the explosive devices explode, thus enabling a larger-scale approach against concentrations of infantry and lightly armored vehicles than conventional explosive munitions.
Since July 2023, the United States has been supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions for artillery
In July last year The United States delivered cluster munitions to Ukraine for the first timebut in the form of 155-millimeter artillery shells of the M777 type. At the time, the Pentagon assured that they had a dud rate of 2.35 percent or less. New York Times reported that older grenades could also be affected by a rate of up to 14 percent. The British BBC According to experts, the average dud rate for cluster munitions is about 20 percent, while that of Russian cluster munitions reaches 40 percent.
So if so far Videos or other evidence of the use of cluster munitions by Ukraine emerged, it would normally have been this type of M777 artillery shell. Recently, the USA is also apparently equipping Ukraine with M30 GMLRS rockets with cluster munitions warheads for the HIMARS system. This was reported by the military news platform Army Recognition citing the X-Account Ukraine Battle Map At the beginning of June, in reference to a strike against the Russian border town of Belgorod.
HIMARS missiles: fragmentation warhead, explosive or tungsten cluster munitions
The M30 rockets carry 404 explosive M101 submunitions. Their war load differs from the 90 kg fragmentation warhead of the M31 rocket, which Ukraine received as a standard projectile for the HIMARS launcher from the beginning of US deliveries. The M31 is better suited to attacking fixed targets such as buildings or ammunition depots, but also has an anti-personnel effect: when it detonates, fragments the housing into numerous metal fragments. They no longer pose a threat once they have landed.
There is a third type of HIMARS rocket, which is a sort of modern compromise between the M30 and M31: the M30A1 with an “alternative warhead”. Like the other two variants, this projectile has a range of 15 to 92 kilometers. However, it is filled with 182,000 pre-formed tungsten fragments to combat infantry and light vehicles – like the standard M30. However, like the M31, this submunition poses no danger after the event because it is not explosive.
Has tungsten cluster munitions been in Ukraine since autumn 2022?
Isolated evidence such as the Video of a Russian truck riddled with holes or a picture that a container of M30A1 rockets in Ukraine suggest that this type of munitions could have been in Ukraine since autumn 2022. However, since the latest video shows a whole field of small explosions, it seems plausible that the M30 rocket with explosive cluster munitions was used here and not the more modern M30A1.
Russia recently accused Ukraine of using cluster munitions against the civilian population. Last weekend, a Ukrainian ATACMS missile exploded over a busy beach in Russian-occupied Crimea. Four people, including two children, were killed and 151 were injured, according to Russian sources. The Russian military initially announced that its own air defenses had influenced the course of the projectile before it exploded over the beach, but then retracted this statement. Instead, it then accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting the civilians with cluster munitions.
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