Geneva: Ukraine saw more than 900 cluster munition casualties in 2022, amid broad Russian use of the widely-banned weapons, driving global casualty figures to a record high, a monitoring group said Tuesday.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, it has “extensively” used stocks of old cluster munitions and newly developed ones, and Ukrainian forces also used such weapons “to a lesser extent,” the Cluster Munition Coalition said in an annual report.
In all, the country, which had registered no cluster munition casualties for several years, recorded 916 deaths and injuries from the weapons last year, impacting essentially civilians, the report showed.
Those casualties accounted for the vast majority of the global figure, which rose to 1,172 in 2022 — the highest annual number since CMC began reporting in 2010.
Nearly all of the casualties registered in Ukraine — 890 of them, including 294 deaths — were caused by attacks using cluster munitions, which can be dropped from planes or fired from artillery, before exploding in mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area.
Such weapons also pose a lasting threat, as many fail to explode on impact, continuing to litter the ground and effectively act as land mines that can go off years after they are deployed.
Twenty-six of the casualties recorded in Ukraine last year were caused by such cluster munition remnants.
As is typically the case with such weapons, “the vast majority of cluster munition casualties in Ukraine were civilians,” Loren Persi, a co-author of the report, told AFP in an email.
A full 855 of the known casualties in Ukraine — 93.3 percent — were civilians, while 58 were military and three were deminers, according to CMC’s data.
Persi meanwhile stressed that many casualties could have gone unrecorded, pointing to indications that there were at least another 51 cluster munition attacks in 2022 where casualties were not recorded.
Beyond Ukraine, cluster munition attacks were registered last year in Syria and Myanmar, with such attacks across the three countries causing 987 casualties in total.
That comes after no new casualties were recorded anywhere in the world from attacks using such weapons in 2021.
At least 185 people were meanwhile killed or wounded by cluster munition remnants across those and five other countries: Azerbaijan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon and Yemen, the report showed.
That compares to 149 casualties in 2021, it said, pointing out that children make up over 70 percent of all casualties from cluster munition remnants.
Neither Russia, Ukraine, Syria nor Myanmar have joined the convention prohibiting the use, transfer, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs, which has 112 state parties and 12 other signatories.
The United States, which is also not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, meanwhile sparked widespread outcry in July with its decision to provide Kyiv the weapons.
“New transfers and use of cluster munitions are of grave concern due to the documented harm to civilians and fact that a majority of countries have banned these weapons,” said Mary Wareham, the arms advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, who participated in editing CMC’s annual report.
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Over 900 cluster munition casualties in Ukraine in 2022: monitor
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Over 900 cluster munition casualties in Ukraine in 2022: monitor
- The country, which had registered no cluster munition casualties for several years, recorded 916 deaths and injuries
- Nearly all of the casualties registered in Ukraine — 890 of them, including 294 deaths — were caused by attacks using cluster munitions
Reference to Trump’s impeachments is removed from the display of his Smithsonian photo portrait
- For now, references to Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton being impeached in 1868 and 1998, respectively, remain as part of their portrait labels, as does President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s photo portrait display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has had references to his two impeachments removed, the latest apparent change at the collection of museums he has accused of bias as he asserts his influence over how official presentations document US history.
The wall text, which summarized Trump’s first presidency and noted his 2024 comeback victory, was part of the museum’s “American Presidents” exhibition. The description had been placed alongside a photograph of Trump taken during his first term. Now, a different photo appears without any accompanying text block, though the text was available online. Trump was the only president whose display in the gallery, as seen Sunday, did not include any extended text.
The White House did not say whether it sought any changes. Nor did a Smithsonian statement in response to Associated Press questions. But Trump ordered in August that Smithsonian officials review all exhibits before the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. The Republican administration said the effort would “ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Trump’s original “portrait label,” as the Smithsonian calls it, notes Trump’s Supreme Court nominations and his administration’s development of COVID-19 vaccines. That section concludes: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.”
Then the text continues: “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837– 1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”
Asked about the display, White House spokesman Davis Ingle celebrated the new photograph, which shows Trump, brow furrowed, leaning over his Oval Office desk. Ingle said it ensures Trump’s “unmatched aura ... will be felt throughout the halls of the National Portrait Gallery.”
The portrait was taken by White House photographer Daniel Torok, who is credited in the display that includes medallions noting Trump is the 45th and 47th president. Similar numerical medallions appear alongside other presidents’ painted portraits that also include the more extended biographical summaries such as what had been part of Trump’s display.
Sitting presidents are represented by photographs until their official paintings are commissioned and completed.
Ingle did not answer questions about whether Trump or a White House aide, on his behalf, asked for anything related to the portrait label.
The gallery said in a statement that it had previously rotated two photographs of Trump from its collection before putting up Torok’s work.
“The museum is beginning its planned update of the America’s Presidents gallery which will undergo a larger refresh this Spring,” the gallery statement said. “For some new exhibitions and displays, the museum has been exploring quotes or tombstone labels, which provide only general information, such as the artist’s name.”
For now, references to Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton being impeached in 1868 and 1998, respectively, remain as part of their portrait labels, as does President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal.
And, the gallery statement noted, “The history of Presidential impeachments continues to be represented in our museums, including the National Museum of American History.”
Trump has made clear his intentions to shape how the federal government documents US history and culture. He has offered an especially harsh assessment of how the Smithsonian and other museums have featured chattel slavery as a seminal variable in the nation’s development but also taken steps to reshape how he and his contemporary rivals are depicted.
In the months before his order for a Smithsonian review, he fired the head archivist of the National Archives and said he was firing the National Portrait Gallery’s director, Kim Sajet, as part of his overhaul. Sajet maintained the backing of the Smithsonian’s governing board, but she ultimately resigned.
At the White House, Trump has designed a notably partisan and subjective “Presidential Walk of Fame” featuring gilded photographs of himself and his predecessors — with the exception of Biden, who is represented by an autopen — along with plaques describing their presidencies.
The White House said at the time that Trump himself was a primary author of the plaques. Notably, Trump’s two plaques praise the 45th and 47th president as a historically successful figure while those under Biden’s autopen stand-in describe the 46th executive as “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”
