SPUTNIK
On June 23, Ukraine carried out a deliberate terror attack against Russian civilians in Crimea, the Russian Defense Ministry stated, holding both Washington and the Kiev regime responsible for the strike.
On Sunday at 12:15pm local time Ukraine attacked the Russian city of Sevastopol with five US-made ATACMS (Army TACtical Missile System) rockets armed with cluster bomblets.
Russian air defenses intercepted four missiles, while the explosion of the fifth cluster warhead led to the death of at least five civilians and injured 124, including 27 children, according to the Russian Ministry of Health.
"Fallen cluster munitions hit the beach. There is a high density of people there, hence there are so many victims," Nikolai Kostikin, an expert from the Moscow-based Bureau of Military-Political Analysis think tank, told Sputnik.
The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) bans the weapons as they pose an immediate threat to civilians by randomly scattering submunitions over a wide area. Their unexploded remnants could endanger the area's inhabitants long after the conflict.
Scott Bennett: Sevastopol beach attack with US ATACMS missiles is a crime against humanity
“Today there was an attack upon the Sevastopol beach area in which [several] people have been killed and the number is growing. Two children, a three-year-old and a nine-year-old were killed and two adults by ATACMS, US missile munitions fired by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, no doubt guided and managed by United States military personnel who are experts in the management of those weapons systems,” former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik.
The attack on Sevastopol deliberately targeted a civilian beach, an area without any military presence, making it a crime against humanity and a war crime, he emphasized.
Bennett urged the US to investigate the attack, otherwise “the United States has blood on its hand and is a willing participant in these ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The incident should be included in a whistleblowing report to the US Ambassador to Russia as evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international law, US constitutional principles and various treaties, he added.
“Today there was an attack upon the Sevastopol beach area in which [several] people have been killed and the number is growing. Two children, a three-year-old and a nine-year-old were killed and two adults by ATACMS, US missile munitions fired by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, no doubt guided and managed by United States military personnel who are experts in the management of those weapons systems,” former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik.
The attack on Sevastopol deliberately targeted a civilian beach, an area without any military presence, making it a crime against humanity and a war crime, he emphasized.
Bennett urged the US to investigate the attack, otherwise “the United States has blood on its hand and is a willing participant in these ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The incident should be included in a whistleblowing report to the US Ambassador to Russia as evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international law, US constitutional principles and various treaties, he added.The New York Times previously reported that each ATACMS missile provided by the US to Ukraine could dispense up to 950 small bomblets. The newspaper specified that the US is not a signatory to the convention.
Kostikin noted that even if Ukraine sought to hit Russian military facilities on the peninsula, it deliberately targeted the missiles to pass over crowded areas, meaning that the efforts to intercept them would still pose a risk of damaging civilian targets. He added that the Ukrainian military has used the same tactic many times before.
Attempts to Intimidate Russians are Futile
Alexey Sukonkin, a Russian military observer, assessed the terror attack as a show of force and the demonstration of the West's support to the Kiev regime.
"The death of civilians fits into this plan as a way to intimidate [Russia]," Sukonkin stressed.
"The ballistic missile was fired at maximum range at Sevastopol, because the city is iconic for [Russians]. They chose the Holy Trinity Sunday [for the attack]. They often do this when people gather," Vasily Dandykin, military analyst and retired Captain 1st Rank of the Russian Navy, told Sputnik.
Dandykin shares Sukonkin's view that the attack was aimed at intimidating Russians and sowing panic within society.
"[Sevastopol] is a city whose population is impossible to intimidate," the military analyst said. "Sevastopol is a long-suffering city. This city is special for Russia's history. It was in Sevastopol that the Crimean Spring began as well as resistance to those who carried out a [2014] coup in Ukraine and openly took the path of Nazism."
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