Russia fired cluster munitions at Ukrainian energy facilities in its massive attack Thursday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said, slamming it as a "despicable escalation" by Moscow.
Cluster munitions can be dropped from planes or fired from artillery and missiles, exploding mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area. Experts say both Kyiv and Moscow have used them in the almost three-year war.
"In several regions, strikes with cluster munitions were recorded, and they targeted civilian infrastructure," Zelensky said on social media.
The barrage, in which Ukraine downed 79 missiles and 35 drones, left over a million Ukrainians without electricity in freezing cold temperatures.
"This is a very despicable escalation of Russian terrorist tactics," Zelensky said.
Cluster munitions have killed or wounded over 1,000 people in Ukraine since Russia launched its war in February 2022, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in its annual report in September.
They also pose a long-term risk since many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as landmines that can explode years later, the CMC noted.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine is among the 112 states that are party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the use, transfer, production and storage of cluster bombs.
The United States, also not a party to the treaty, had agreed to transfer cluster munitions to Kyiv in July 2023, a move that was criticised even by the two countries' allies.
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