Ukraine has accused Russia of launching thermobaric weapons against their forces after enemy troops made their biggest progress in weeks in the country’s eastern region on Friday.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry shared a video Thursday of explosions it said were from TOS-1A thermobaric missiles landing on Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region.
“This is what the greatest and most horrific war of the 21st century looks like,” the agency wrote on Twitter.
It was not immediately clear when the bombing took place.
Thermobaric weapons, sometimes called vacuum bombs, are high-energy explosives that consume oxygen from the air around them. This creates an explosion with a higher temperature and a longer blast wave at a higher pressure than a conventional bomb, making it particularly deadly in an urban environment.
Meanwhile, Russian forces on Friday night captured the town of Lyman, a railway junction about 55 miles west of Severodonetsk, the last Ukrainian holder in the Luhansk region.
The invading troops also continued to work to encircle Severodonetsk as Russian troops shelled the city on Friday.
Ukraine’s armed forces have released a video of what is considered a thermobaric weapon. Armed Forces of Ukraine / Title image
“There are battles on the outskirts of the city. The massive artillery shelling does not stop day and night, “said Mayor Alexander Struck. “The city is being systematically destroyed – 90% of the buildings in the city are damaged.
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Struck said Russian saboteurs had tried to take over the Mir Hotel in the city’s northeastern district, and fighting continued there.
A firefighter helped put out a fire in a building in eastern Ukraine on May 27. ARIS MESSINIS / AFP via Getty Images
The mayor estimated that about 1,500 civilians had died in Severodonetsk since the start of the war and that many, many more had fled. Struck said the city has shrunk to about 13,000 in peacetime from 100,000.
In Kharkov, west of the Donbass region, where a strong Ukrainian counterattack pushed the Kremlin forces back to the border less than two weeks ago, Russian shelling has intensified again.
Ukrainian authorities say four civilians were killed in a new round of Russian bombings in Kharkov, where a photo shows a man crying in the street next to a dead body on Thursday.
With postal wires
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