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GENEVA: Cluster munitions have killed or injured more than 1,200 civilians in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, a monitor said Monday, decrying “troubling setbacks” in global efforts to eradicate the weapons.
Since Russia expanded the invasion of its western neighbor in February 2022, Ukraine has registered the highest number of recorded annual cluster munition casualties worldwide, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in its annual report.
Russia has used the widely-banned weapons “extensively” since the first day of the war, it said, adding that Ukraine too had used the weapons, and faces Russian accusations of deploying them inside of Russia.
At least 193 cluster munition casualties were recorded in Ukraine in 2024, out of 314 globally, the report said.
In total, more than 1,200 such casualties have been registered in Ukraine since the start of the war, most of them in 2022.
But the report stressed that the figure was surely a dramatic underestimate, pointing out that last year alone, Ukraine suffered around 40 cluster munition attacks where casualty numbers were not given.
Cluster munitions can be dropped from planes or fired from artillery before exploding in mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area.
They pose a lasting threat since many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as land mines that can explode years later.


- ‘Catastrophic’ -

Neither Russia nor Ukraine are 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 only other two countries where cluster munition attacks were registered last year — Myanmar and Syria — have not joined the convention either.
The United States, also not a party to the treaty, sparked outcry with its 2023 decision to transfer cluster munitions to Kyiv.
It has since transferred the weapons to Ukraine in at least seven separate shipments, CMC said.
Submunitions with Korean language markings have meanwhile been found in Ukrainian-controlled territory this year, but the report said it remained unclear if they had been used by the North Korean forces fighting alongside Russians in the war, or if they had simply been acquired from North Korea by Russia for Russian use.
At a global level, CMC also warned of “troubling setbacks” threatening efforts to establish new international norms stigmatising the use of cluster munitions.
Lithuania in March this year became the first ever country to withdraw from the treaty, six months after it announced it was leaving, citing regional security concerns.
Following that move, Lithuania, along with Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, also said they would quit a treaty banning anti-personnel land mines amid concerns over “Russia’s aggression.”
Tamar Gabelnick, head of the Cluster Munition Coalition, decried Lithuania’s departure, warning that it “undermines the norm created by the convention, with catastrophic implications for the rule of international law protecting civilians.”
“We have already seen the impact this decision has had on the Mine Ban Treaty, and states should be extremely wary of a wider domino effect.”

YANGON: Myanmar’s junta acknowledged Monday its long-promised election would not be held in about one in seven national parliament constituencies, as it battles myriad rebel forces opposed to the poll.
A civil war has consumed Myanmar since the military snatched power in a 2021 coup, jailing democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi and deposing her civilian government.
The military has touted elections – due to start in phases on December 28 – as a path to reconciliation.
However monitors are slating the poll as a ploy to legitimize continuing military rule, while it is set to be boycotted by many ousted lawmakers and blocked by armed opposition groups in enclaves they control.
A notice by Myanmar’s Union Election Commission shared in state media said elections would not be held in 56 lower house constituencies and nine upper house constituencies.
The notice did not provide a specific reason for the cancelation but said “these constituencies have been deemed not conducive to holding free and fair elections.”
However, many of the territories are known battlegrounds or areas where the military has lost control to an array of pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic minority armed organizations defying its writ.
There are a total of 440 constituencies for Myanmar’s upper and lower houses, with the 65 canceled accounting for nearly 15 percent of the total.
They include the rebel-held ruby mining hub of Mogok, a majority of constituencies in western Rakhine state where the military has lost ground, and numerous areas the junta has been hammering with air strikes.
Myanmar’s junta lost swaths of territory when scattered opposition groups committed to a combined offensive starting in late 2023, but it has recently clawed back some ground with several victories.
Nonetheless, there have been other signs the poll will be limited in scope.
A census held last year in preparation for the election estimated it failed to collect data from 19 million of the country’s 51 million people, according to provisional findings.
“Significant security constraints” were cited as one reason for the shortfall.