KRAMATORSK, Ukraine – Russia has made liberal use of one of its most formidable conventional weapons in fighting in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian military commanders, doctors, British officials and videos of battlefields.
The weapon, a runway-mounted rocket artillery system nicknamed Solntsepek, or heat wave, fires thermobaric warheads that explode with tremendous force, sending potentially lethal shock waves into bunkers or trenches where soldiers from another way they would be safe.
“You can feel the ground shaking,” said Colonel Yevhen Shamataliuk, commander of the 95th Ukrainian Brigade, whose soldiers were attacked by Russian heatwave weapons during the fighting. this month near the city of Izium.
“It’s very destructive,” Colonel Shamataliuk said. “It destroys bunkers. They just sink into those inside.”
The United States and other armies also deploy thermobaric warheads on rocket-propelled missiles and grenades. And the Ukrainian army said on April 5 that it had fired heat wave thermobaric rockets from a system captured against Russian troops, with the intention of burning them with its own weapon, in combat. near Izium.
Thermobaric weapons are not banned, nor are they dealt with in the Geneva Conventions, a series of international agreements governing war. The Russian military has deployed the weapon of the heat wave in the war in Syria, but its use in Ukraine has become systematic, according to the Ukrainian army and video footage of attacks on eastern cities of Ukraine.
These explosives, also called air-fuel bombs or vacuum bombs, disperse a flammable mist or dust that then ignites and burns in the air. The result is a powerful explosion followed by a partial vacuum as oxygen is sucked out of the air as the fuel burns.
Ukrainian soldiers who were trapped in the blasts and survived suffered a mixture of burns and concussions, the sergeant said. Anna Federchuk, a medical ambulance based in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, has treated the victims of the heatwave attacks.
“It’s a mixed diagnosis,” he said of the typical victim of a heat wave explosion. “The burns are deep and severe.”
The Russian weapon carries a rocket box on top of a tank-like caterpillar vehicle. You can fire individual rockets or a terrifying blast. However, like many Russian weapons deployed in the Ukrainian war, the heat wave system may not be as effective or decisive in combat as Russian military propaganda suggested it would be.
Developed in the 1980s and once seen as an impressive and dreaded invention of late Soviet military prowess, the heat wave, formally known as the Tos-1 heavy flamethrower, has drawbacks.
With a range of only six miles, you have to drive close to the front to shoot. There, he has been vulnerable to ambushes in Ukraine. In March, a video of drones showed Ukrainian soldiers blowing up a heatwave weapon during an ambush outside the Kyiv suburb of Brovary.
The attack on the vehicle sent its rockets into the Russians’ own column of armored vehicles, although it was unclear if they had been destroyed.
Its use near the front has also allowed Ukraine to capture some of the weapons. Videos have appeared online claiming to show Ukrainian tractor drivers towing weapons captured by the heat wave far from the front. Ukrainian soldiers have claimed on social media that they confiscated five of the weapons systems as trophies.
The Ukrainian military has also said that the Russians suffered incidents of friendly fire with the heat wave when it launched highly destructive but unguided rockets.
“The leadership of the 97th Infantry Battalion expresses its satisfaction with the actions of the Russian occupiers,” the Ukrainian army said in a sarcastic statement on May 8 after what it said was a friendly fire attack in the region. of Zaporizhzhia who killed Russian soldiers. “These actions are perceived positively and supported in every way by the Ukrainian army. We understand that there is a tradition of cooking shish kebabs in May.”
Maria Varenikova contributed to the report.