The timeline below shows mentions of cluster munitions as illegal or war crimes across a handful of television news channels:
Below is a roundup of a few quotes from the Internet Archive's TV News Archive over the past decade:
- Mayor of Mykolayiv Ukraine Oleksandr Syenkevych: "they used illegal cluster bombs"
- White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki: "we've seen a range of reports, dana, that are horrifying about the use of barbaric tactics whether cluster bombs or other tactics that we've seen that could be classified as a war crime"
- Former Legal Adviser of the Department of State Harold Koh: "there are some weapons that are inherently illegal, in my judgment, chemical weapons, unexploded ordinance, cluster bombs"
- White House Briefing: "in kuwait, the coalition has apparently used cluster bombs which you [White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest] and secretary general ban ki-moon suggested may amount to a war crime"
- Former US Ambassador To Germany: "he has been dropping barrel bombs and cluster bombs and all that forever which are war crimes and crimes against humanity"
- Fox News: "ukrainian sources say russia used cluster bombs yesterday, cluster bombs are illegal because they drop bomblets which are indiscriminate and imprecise for they can also leave unexploded bomblets on the ground long after the combat has left the area"
- Former US Army Commanding General Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling: "this is the russian way of war. we've been talking about this for 16 months now. the use of illegal weapons like cluster munitions"
- Former US Ambassador To Ukraine John Herbst: "we said the russians have used cluster bombs, which is also a war crime, so we're beginning to see a pretty clear pattern of russian war crimes in ukraine and we should call them out on it"
- Former US Ambassador To Ukraine John Herbst: "it's very simple. to use cluster bombs is a war crime"
- CNN: "nato accused russia of using cluster bombs, a devastating weapon that can kill indiscriminately though a senior defense official says they can't confirm that type of weapon has been used"
- Sky News: "the united nations is investigating the use of cluster bombs as war crimes"
- CNN: "the nato secretary general today confirmed that russia is using banned cluster bombs this this fight"
- NYTimes National Security Correspondent David Sanger: "the biggest humanitarian disaster in the middle east which is yemen right now where the saudis have been dropping cluster bombs and conducting other events that some people would call war crimes"
- Georgetown University Government Chair Anthony Arend: "the deliberate targeting of hospitals and medical facilities, the use of torture, the mutilation of bodies, the use of weapons like cluster munitions, which cause unnecessary suffering, the mistreatment of prisoners of war and we could go on. those are what we mean by war crimes"
- Human Rights Watch Researcher Bonnie Docherty: "with regard to cluster missions, they've used them widely and killed numerous civilians. we don't have exact statistics how many civilian casualties have been caused. and cluster mission rockets in particular and also missiles as well, documented several cases of that, and kharkiv, i mentioned in my testimony, and others near hospitals. we have evidence of that that we could use potentially. evidence. and indiscriminate weapons that violate international humanitarian law."
- CNN: "given what we saw in bucha and borodyanka, the leveling of the entire city of mariupol, direct attacks, deliberate ones, on hospitals, the use of weapons designed specifically to kill people, antipersonnel, mines, cluster bombs. it is not hard to make a case that russian tactics in ukraine amount to war crimes on a scale not seen in europe since the atrocities in the former yugoslavia or perhaps going back to world war ii. how realistic is it to hold vladimir putin himself directly accountable? "
- Rep. Sara Jacobs: "the use of cluster munitions is rightly condemned. 123 states have joined the convention on cluster munitions. unfortunately, the united states is not one of them"