Ukrainian Cluster Munitions Massacred Russian Troops Fleeing Urozhaine

Ukrainian forces continue to use western supplied weapons intelligently and to great effect. JL 

David Axe reports in Forbes:

By advancing east and west of Urozhaine, a key Russian strongpoint leading toward Mariupol, 50 miles away on the Black Sea coast, the Ukrainians left the increasingly desperate Russian garrison just one way out of Urozhaine: the T0518 road, threading south into neighboring Staromlynivka. When the depleted Russian garrison retreated on Sunday, it did so on foot and in broad daylight along the open road and the fields abutting it. Ukrainian drones watched from overhead. And Ukrainian artillery batteries took aim. What followed was a bloodbath.It was all but inevitable that the Russian garrison in occupied Urozhaine would fall. Advancing in a pulse of rapid assaults since early June, a powerful division-size Ukrainian force—including all four Ukrainian marine corps brigades—had flanked Urozhaine, a tiny settlement with a few hundred structures arrayed along three parallel north-south roads in southern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

By advancing east and west of Urozhaine, a key Russian strongpoint in a chain of them leading south toward occupied Mariupol, 50 miles away on the Black Sea coast, the Ukrainians left the increasingly desperate Russian garrison—including elements of the 37th Motor Rifle Brigade—just one way out of Urozhaine: the T0518 road, threading south into neighboring Zavitne Bazhannya and Staromlynivka.

“The recapture of neighboring Urozhaine was only a matter of time,” the independent Conflict Intelligence Team wrote. And when the depleted Russian garrison fully or partially retreated on Saturday or Sunday, it did so on foot and in broad daylight along the open road and the fields abutting it.

Ukrainian drones watched from overhead. And Ukrainian artillery batteries took aim. What followed was a bloodbath.

A pair of drone videos that the Ukrainian defense ministry released on Sunday depicts scores of Russians hustling along the road. In the first video, a high-explosive artillery shell explodes, blowing soldiers to the ground. In the second video, the Ukrainian gunners use dual-purpose improved conventional munitions—cluster shells—to pepper the Russians’ escape route.

Russian forces have been using cluster munitions since the beginning of their wider war on Ukraine starting in February 2022. Ukrainian forces got Turkish cluster shells in late 2022 and, this spring, also got American-made M483A1 DPICM rounds for their NATO-style 155-millimeter howitzers.