▲ The above picture is not related to the content of the article.
Ukrainians claim that Russia used "vacuum bombs" in Ukraine, known as weapons of mass destruction.
Ukrainian ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova said after a report to the US Congress that "the Russian military used vacuum bombs today, which is actually prohibited under the Geneva Conventions," Reuters and others reported.
Ambassador Markarova claimed that Russia used vacuum bombs to target residential areas.
It is not yet known whether Russia actually used vacuum bombs, and White House press secretary Jen Saki said the US administration could not confirm the authenticity of Russia's use of vacuum bombs.
A vacuum bomb damages a person's internal organs by sucking in oxygen and causing a very high-temperature explosion.
The vacuum bomb got its name because in the process it temporarily vacuumed the blast radius.
This weapon, also called a thermo-pressure bomb, is recognized as an unethical weapon of mass destruction because of its indiscriminate destructive power at the drop point.
Although it has not been officially confirmed that a vacuum bomb was used in Ukraine, there are reports that a TOS-1 multiple rocket launcher capable of firing a vacuum bomb has been seen in eastern Ukraine and the second city of Kharkov.
Russia already has a history of using vacuum bombs in the Chechen conflict and the Syrian civil war.
According to the US public radio station NPR, there were also claims that Russia was using cluster bombs in Ukraine.
Human rights groups Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) claimed that civilians were killed in cluster bomb attacks, and experts analyzed that the rockets found at the site were correct.
When dropped, the cluster bomb destroys its parent in the air, and hundreds of baby bombs are scattered around the target, killing an unspecified number of people.
In particular, some of the baby bombs do not explode and remain on the ground like land mines, harming future generations of civilians unrelated to war.
The Geneva Conventions, an international law applicable in times of armed conflict, stipulate that those not directly involved in combat must be protected, including civilians as well as wounded or captured soldiers.