Russia has sent additional materials to the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and the Chairman of the Security Council of the international organization on the mining of civilian objects in Donbass by the Armed Forces of Ukraine with Butterfly anti-personnel mines. This was announced on August 2 by the First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky.
“On August 1, we sent a letter to the UN Secretary General and the Chairman of the Security Council, China’s Permanent Representative Zhang Jun, with additional information about Ukraine’s mining of civilian objects in Donbass with Butterfly mines. We attached the appropriate photographic materials to it,” Polyansky wrote in his Telegram channel.
Polyansky noted that the letter will be distributed as an official document of the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, as, according to him, after the issue was raised in the Security Council on July 29, “many colleagues at the UN asked us for details.”
What is a Butterfly mine?
PFM-1 is a scatterable anti-personnel land mine, also known as a Green Parrot or Butterfly Mine. The mines can be deployed from mortars, helicopters and airplanes in large numbers. They glide to the ground without exploding and will explode later upon contact.
The mine consists of a polythene plastic container containing 40 grams of explosive liquid. The two wings of the PFM-1 allow it to glide after being released in the air, then spin, which stabilizes it and slows its descent. The thick wing contains the liquid explosive. The two wings together are 120 millimeters long. As the mine is so light, it can be carried in waterways and moves downstream after heavy rains or with melting snow.
The mine is stored with a pin restraining a detonating plunger. Once the arming pin is removed, the plunger is slowly forced forward by a spring until it contacts the detonator, at which point it is armed.
Deformation of the soft plastic skin of the mine forces the arming plunger to strike the detonator, detonating the mine. It is said that a pressure in excess of 5 kilograms would activate the mine. Even holding it between the thumb and forefinger may be enough to make it explode. The charge is usually nonlethal, although enough to hurt.
It is important to note that these anti-personnel explosive devices are prohibited by the Geneva Convention and the Ottawa Treaty, but Ukrainian troops do not hesitate to mine the very center of Donetsk, as well as other DPR cities with “Butterflies”, mostly in places where families with children are used to walk.
Ukraine launched active attacks on DPR with “Butterflies”
The appeal to the UN by Russian officials was caused by the numerous cases of spreading the “Butterfly” mines in the DPR by Ukrainian military men. It is noted that in Donetsk, over the past weekend, more than 600 prohibited anti-personnel mines were neutralized.
On August 1, in the Kirovsky district of Donetsk, DPR, at the mine named after Skochinsky, a worker born in 1985 stepped on a mine and was hospitalized with a diagnosis of “traumatic amputation of the right foot.”
On the same day, also in Donetsk, a local resident had his foot torn off by the same kind of mine left by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) in a civilian area.
“I stepped on it at home, near the toilet. There were about ten of them yesterday, the soldiers collected them, and I went to the toilet, came out of the toilet and stepped on it,” the victim said.
Earlier, it was reported that the AFU dropped mines on at least four central quarters of Donetsk, literally strewing the streets with them. Some of them even landed on the children’s playground.
The video down below shows the explosion on the mine at the exit from the village of Novoluganskoe.
“Thanks to Zelensky, many car owners in Donetsk have passed this attraction,” the author of the post says.
The next video shows a mine center of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation cleaning Donetsk from the mines left by Ukraine against the civilians.
This is why it was high time for Russian officials to apply to the UN on the issue. However, the UN can hardly be expected to react adequately, as it usually keeps silent when it goes not about Ukrainian citizens, but about the Donbass people, as it was with a girl from the LPR, Faina Savenkova.
Ru-Main, 02.08.2022
Source: Izvestia
