Ukraine war: Putin's cruel weapon sighted near the border
Created: 03/03/2022, 05:40
By: Stephanie Munk
The TOS-1 Buratino multiple rocket launcher during an exercise in a military area in Russia.
© Dmitry Roguli/ITAR-TASS/dpa
The Ukraine war is getting bloodier, and rockets have already exploded in residential areas.
There is growing fear of one of Putin's cruellest weapons: the TOS-1 multiple rocket launcher.
Kyiv/Moscow – In the escalating Ukraine conflict*, the actions of Russia's President Vladimir Putin* seem to be becoming increasingly brutal, and the Russian President apparently accepts civilian deaths for faster military successes in the neighboring country.
Russian bombs are now also hitting residential areas and civilians.
There are growing fears that Putin is also using one of his cruellest weapons in the Ukraine conflict: the TOS-1 Buratino multiple rocket launcher, which
euronews.next
reports can literally obliterate everything in its range and destroy entire blocks of flats with one shot.
According to a report by
Bild
, the TOS-1 multiple rocket launcher is capable of firing 24 thermobaric bombs (another term: vacuum bomb) at the same time.
The nickname "Buratino" derives from the Russian word for "Pinocchio," according to the
Eurasian Times
, and arose because of the rocket launcher's long "nose."
The 24 warheads can be upgraded with a thermobaric warhead, making them an extremely brutal and deadly weapon: they can cause severe internal injuries through pressure and heat waves, and the air of bystanders is "literally sucked out of their lungs," says the report the
picture
.
Ukraine War: Putin's TOS-1 weapons cause immense destruction
According to
euronews.next
, the explosion creates an overpressure effect that ends in a huge detonation and is extremely destructive due to the shock waves that are created.
A single shot could destroy several blocks of flats, they say.
Bild
cites a 2000 CIA study that said: “Those in the vicinity of the blast will be wiped out.
Those on the edge of the blast are likely to suffer many internal (...) injuries.”
The TOS-1 Buratino multiple rocket launcher during an exercise in a military area in Russia.
© Dmitry Roguli/ITAR-TASS/dpa
Ukraine War: Has Putin Already Used Thermobaric Bombs?
According to Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova, Russia used a vacuum bomb in Ukraine as early as Monday, February 28.
"They used a vacuum bomb today, which is prohibited under the Geneva Convention," Oksana Markarova told
journalists after a meeting at the White House, according to British newspaper
The Independent .
"The devastation that Russia wants to inflict on Ukraine is great." However, independent sources have not confirmed this statement by the ambassador.
She also did not name the place where the vacuum bomb is said to have exploded.
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj* spoke of a vacuum bomb which is said to have exploded in Kyiv, but the information has not been independently verified either.
Ukraine war: Putin's dangerous weapon sighted several times at the border with Ukraine
Putin's TOS-1 rocket launchers have already been sighted near the Ukrainian border.
CNN reporter Frederik Pleitgen shared a video on Twitter of an army transporter with the TOS-1 Buratino multiple rocket launcher driving towards the Ukrainian border.
According to the news portal
Eurasian Times
, cameras on the Belarus-Ukraine border already filmed TOS-1 rocket launchers on February 24.
Russia has used TOS-1 in several conflicts, starting
in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later in Chechnya and Syria , according to
euronews.next .
According to
The Guardian
, the United States also has the weapons and used them, for example, in the fight against al-Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan.
(smu) *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
Thermobaric bomb (vacuum bomb or aerosol bomb)
A thermobaric bomb or in German called an aerosol bomb describes a special weapon that, when triggered, distributes a substance without an oxidizing agent as an aerosol in the air and then mixes it with the oxygen in the environment and ignites it.
The two phases of the explosion create a vacuum, from which the colloquial name vacuum bomb is derived.
The distribution of the aerosols makes the vacuum bomb more effective when bombarding fortified structures.
In addition to the large-scale effect, the detonation of an aerosol bomb generates more heat than conventional bombs.
The use of aerosol bombs is prohibited under the 1980 Geneva Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons in the vicinity of civilian structures or civilians.