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Putin's "Hell's Weapon" in action? Russia causes destruction in Ukraine with devastating vacuum bombs

2023-01-24T20:26:37.998Z


Heavy fighting is raging in eastern Ukraine. Russia is now apparently taking drastic measures.


Heavy fighting is raging in eastern Ukraine.

Russia is now apparently taking drastic measures.

Bakhmut - The Ukrainian army has been defending Bakhmut, a town in Donetsk Oblast with a pre-war population of 74,000, for months.

Similar to the cities of Sievjerodonetsk and Lysychansk, the military is using a "tactic of attrition", as experts from the think tank "Institute for the Study of War" recently analyzed.

What is meant is a trench warfare that entails heavy losses.

Both the Russian and the Ukrainian armies have already had to register them.

Russia needs success stories in the Ukraine war

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bakhmut is a symbol.

The capture of the eastern Ukrainian city would be a sense of achievement after numerous goals in the Ukraine war had already failed.

Both the multiple attempts to get the Donbass under control and the storming of the capital Kyiv failed.

Pictures of the Ukraine war: great horror and small moments of happiness

Pictures of the Ukraine war: great horror and small moments of happiness

In order to achieve this goal, Putin seems to be fine with many things, including the use of so-called vacuum bombs.

Video footage from Europe-sanctioned TV channel RT (formerly Russia Today) is said to show multiple rocket launchers firing aerosol bombs at Bakhmut.

The Reuters news agency also disseminated the images.

As early as the spring, there were reports that Russia had used such vacuum bombs in the city of Ochtyrka in Sumy Oblast.

These have not yet been confirmed.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Assembly at the time: "We have seen videos of Russian forces bringing extraordinarily lethal weapons into Ukraine that should not be on the battlefield." vacuum bombs are banned by the Geneva Convention, making their use an indictable war crime.

Vacuum bombs in the Ukraine war: Experts report devastating effects

"Deployment in a populated area is [...] a war crime, since these weapons have a widespread effect," Frank Sauer, a political scientist at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, told DW at the

time

.

The video recordings from RT mentioned at the beginning show, among other things, how the projectiles hit high-rise housing estates.

The town of Bachmut has been cleared for several weeks since numerous civilians have left the region.

However, such an attack is unlikely to leave any survivors behind.

Vacuum bombs are extremely powerful because they are made almost entirely of fuel.

In combination with oxygen in the air, a vacuum effect occurs after a pressure wave.

This removes all oxygen from the circulating air, since the fuel itself contains no oxidizing agent, according to the

Deutsche Welle

report .

In this context, the NGO "Human Rights Watch" also speaks of the devastating effect of the vacuum bombs: "Those close to the ignition point are destroyed.

Going further away is likely to cause many internal and therefore unseen injuries, including ruptured eardrums, severe concussion, ruptured lungs and other internal organs, and possible blindness."

+

"TOS-1" rocket launchers in action at a Russian military exercise.

(archive photo)

© imago stock & people / Imago Images

In particular, rocket launchers of the "TOS-1" type can fire the vacuum bombs.

Russian missile attacks with this model in Donetsk Oblast caused destruction as early as June.

According to information from the British Ministry of Defense, the rocket launchers were definitely used, the mentioned video recordings suggest that "TOS-1 rocket launchers were also used in the bombing of Bakhmut.

In various media reports, these are described as "Putin's weapon from hell".

Among other things, the deployment in Chechnya is said to have provided for this name, the CIA warned about it in the summer.

(do)

List of rubrics: © imago stock & people / Imago Images

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-01-24

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