Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the arms department of the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch, allegedly admitted that Ukraine is killing civilians with cluster shells. On September 5, Russian media and pro-Russian telegram channels began to disseminate such information. Russians and propagandists refer to the Cluster Munition Monitor 2023 report. The analytical team of Detector Media has looked into the primary sources and tells what human rights activists wrote and what the propagandists thought up.

On September 3, the Human Rights Watch website published Mary Warham's column on the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine. In the text, she refers to Russia's “widespread use of cluster munitions” that has resulted in “civilian deaths and injuries, damage to civilian infrastructure, and contamination of agricultural land”. The human rights activist points out that Ukraine also uses cluster munitions, which “cause civilian casualties, but on a much smaller scale than the Russian army”.

In his blog, Wareham refers to the Cluster Munition Monitor 2023 report. This report mentions that the Ukrainian Armed Forces “used cluster munitions in attacks on Izium in the Kharkiv region between March and September 2022, when it was controlled by the Russian army”. The authors of the report note that the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine denied the accusations of using cluster munitions. The list of sources of the document contains a link to a letter from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. And the letter from the Ministry of Defense states that although Ukraine is not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions of May 30, 2008, “The Armed Forces of Ukraine strictly comply with the norms of international humanitarian law when planning and conducting military operations”. Human Rights Watch condemned the use of cluster munitions, but primarily blamed Russia, not Ukraine, for their use on the battlefield. The authors of the report cited the discussion about the transfer of cluster munitions by the United States to Ukraine as an example of how “stigmatized” the use of these munitions on the battlefield is. But they were reminded of the threats to their civilians even after the end of the war due to the fact that they may not explode immediately. Propagandists claimed that the human rights organization criticized only Ukraine and admitted that it violates international humanitarian law, and ignored the criticism of Russia by human rights activists.

This is not the first time propagandists and Russians have turned to the topic of cluster munitions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which allegedly kill civilians. In July, Detector Media refuted a claim about the death of a Russian propagandist who was allegedly killed by Ukrainians with American cluster shells. With messages about the use of cluster munitions by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, propagandists are trying to plant several ideas on the audience. Firstly, that the Ukrainian military seems to be killing civilians, and this symbolically equates the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the war crimes of the Russians. Secondly, they try to shift the responsibility for the suffering of civilians from the aggressor to the victim of the aggression. And for this, they use the tactics of “third party” propaganda — they put into the mouths of representatives of non-Russian public organizations and media theses that are consonant with the messages of Russian propaganda.