President Vladimir Putin said Russia had a āsufficient stockpileā of cluster bombs and reserved the right to use them if such munitions, the use of which he said he regarded as a crime, were deployed against Russian forces in Ukraine.
Ukraine said on Thursday it had received cluster bombs from the United States
From what I understand Putin is using a stricter definition of ācluster bombsā as a muntition containing a bomblets submunition.
I have seen of Russian videos munitions are hypersonic missiles, thermobaric bombs (incendiary submunition), and timed remote mine submunitions (a timed self-destruct feature or one that turns it inert after a while) but none utilizing a pressure fuse like the butterfly mines that were used by Ukraine.
They are terrible weapons regardless of definition
Even if it was just pure anti-personnel clusters, we have evidence of that far back in 2022. So even then he would be lying. For example there is photo graphic evidence from the bomb disposal teams in Ukraine of 9N24 submunition. Which is soviet pure anti-personnel submunition for their cluster dispensers. It has no other purpose. It isnāt even dual use dumb HEAT/FRAG submunition. 9N24 is pure fragmentations anti-personnel round with simple contact fuse. Hitās ground, the explosive core along the main cylinder shaped munition explodes and well the whole outside wall is lined with steel balls to be thrown in 360 all around.
Similarly 9N210 HE/FRAG munitions have been documented. Again useless against armored targets, only use case is against soft targets like humans. As have 9N235 again HE/FRAG sub munitions been documented.
All same purpose, just little different sized and exact design for different dispensers. Some those might theoretically have fuses with self destruct. However the whole point about cluster munitions being bad is fuses fail, including supposed self-destruct fuses. There is no such thing as 100% reliable fuse, even self destruct one.
My source: Armaments Research Services articles on the subject. Iām sure there is bunch of other more official sources also, including listing more individual incidents and attacks. ARES are just convenient source here, since they are interested the weapons technologies and types used in conflicts, so they have bunch of articles of āThis specific type of submunitions has now been seen in Ukraineā.
