Vladimir Putin's forces are indiscriminately bombing Ukrainians with Russian shelling using deadly thermobaric bombs, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto has said.
Niinisto said during security policy talks at his summer residence in Naantali, Finland, that Russia has begun to use "very powerful" weapons, including illegal thermobaric bombs "that are in fact weapons of mass destruction".
Ukraine and NATO countries have also accused Russia of using thermobaric bombs, which are also known as vacuum bombs and have much more brutal consequences than conventional explosives.
A CIA report said thermobaric bombs can cause "many internal, thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness.”
The pressure wave from the explosive destroys delicate air sacs or can cause an embolism, as the wide area of the ignited particles makes people 'suck in' oxygen in the first stage of the blast.
Niinisto's remarks come as new evidence shows scores of civilians have been killed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv by indiscriminate Russian shelling using widely banned cluster munitions.
Amnesty International said in a new report that Russian forces caused widespread death and destruction by relentlessly bombarding residential neighbourhoods in the city.
Amnesty found evidence of Russian forces repeatedly using 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions which are subject to international treaty bans because of their indiscriminate effects.
They also used unguided rockets - such as Grads and Uragans - which have a margin of error of more than 100 metres, all of which are banned under international law.
In residential areas where buildings are no more than a few metres apart, inaccuracies are much more likely to cost civilian lives and cause widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure.
The human rights group said: "The continued use of such inaccurate explosive weapons in populated civilian areas, in the knowledge that they are repeatedly causing large numbers of civilian casualties, may even amount to directing attacks against the civilian population."
Veronica Cherevychko, a 30-year-old logistics manager, lost her right leg when a Grad rocket struck a playground in front of her home in the Saltivka neighbourhood, in the northeastern region of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine.
She told Amnesty: “I was sitting on this bench when the explosion happened. I remember hearing a whistling sound just before the explosion.
"Then I woke up in hospital, without a leg; my right leg was gone. Now my life is divided into before 12 March and after 12 March. I will get used to this.
"Now I am not yet used to it; I often try to touch my leg, to scratch my foot … I don’t know what to say about [the] people who did it. I will never understand them.”
