KAB-1500 Russian bomb

Judging by the damage caused to the maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine yesterday, this is very likely the Russian bomb that was dropped there.

Look at the size of that crater in the middle of the central area of the maternity hospital. The KAB-1500 is a Russian guided bomb that is dropped from Sukhoi-35 generation of fighter jets. It weighs 1500 kilograms, approximately 3,300 pounds, and was designed to be dropped on industrial facilities, railyards, ammunition depots, and highway bridges. It is capable of making a crater 50 feet wide and up to 36 feet deep. If you’ll look at the man standing across the crater in the photo above, you will get some idea of its size, which is at least 50 feet across and more than 30 feet deep. It’s as deep as the hospital buildings around it are tall.

The Russian military used this bomb in Syria to bomb Aleppo, and in Chechnya to bomb its capital Grozny. The bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol caused at least 3 deaths and 17 people were wounded. The fact that the Russian bomb is a precision-guided munition using a laser-gyro stabilized seeking system, it appears the hospital was chosen as a target and hit on purpose.

The photo below shows a pregnant Ukrainian woman making her way down a damaged staircase in one of the wings of the hospital.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov claimed today that the hospital was a legitimate target because it was held by “local radical militias.” This was just after he claimed that “We didn't attack Ukraine in the first place." Lavrov was meeting with the Ukrainian foreign minister in Turkey, where they did not reach an agreement on a ceasefire or anything else. Asked by reporters what he meant, given the fact that Ukraine is under constant Russian bombardment, Lavrov said, "We just explained a lot of times that the situation has come that there was a direct threat to the safety and security of the Russian Federation."

Ukrainian officials immediately called the bombing of the maternity hospital a war crime. The Russian laser-guided 1500 kg bomb is a war crime all by itself.