Ukraine has claimed to have destroyed a thermobaric weapons ammunition depot in the Russian-occupied territories overnight, releasing dramatic footage of enormous explosions engulfing the facility.
Ukraine’s armed forces allegedly struck the munitions storage facility in the Pokrovsk district of Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk, where Russian and Ukrainian troops have for months been engaged in a grinding war of attrition.
The General Staff of Ukraine posted a video on Telegram on Friday apparently showing the strike near the town of Selydove, about 12 miles from Pokrovsk, a key strategic town in the war.
In the video, an initial explosion is seen, followed by a series of much larger explosions, in what appears to be the detonation of material on the ground.
Ukraine’s General Staff said that overnight on 28 February, “the Defence Forces of Ukraine destroyed a storage warehouse for thermobaric ammunition of the Russian invaders in the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region, in the Selydove district”.
In addition, it added that Ukraine had hit three other facilities in Russia itself, including the Ilsky Oil Refinery in the Krasnodar of the country’s south, “which is involved in the provision of the Russian army of occupation”.
Thermobaric weapons, also known as fuel-air explosives and vaccuum bombs, have been used by Russia since the early days of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Often filled with aerosolised solid fuel, thermobaric weapons instantly suck the oxygen out of the air, a vacuum effect that creates a massive fireball and produces an especially powerful blast wave.
The effects of such weapons can be devastating: they can collapse buildings, explode human organs and even vaporise bodies.
Ukraine’s General Staff said the results of the strikes on Russian facilities were being clarified.
The claims have not been independently verified.
However, Ukraine has escalated its attacks on Russian military facilities in the past several months, targeting weapons factories and storage facilities as well as energy infrastructure. It has launched repeated attacks against Russian refineries with long-range drones.
The 28 February attack would be the second time the Ilsky oil refinery has been hit this month after it was struck on 17 February, causing a fire.
Meanwhile in Ukraine’s east, Russian forces have been making small but steady gains, taking several villages near Pokrovsk, which they have been trying to take for a year,
The Washington DC-based think-tank the Institute for the Study of War said: “The year-long Russian effort to seize Pokrovsk has so far failed, and Russian forces appear to have abandoned the effort to take the city directly, preferring instead to conduct a wide envelopment.
“The Kremlin may have abandoned even that effort for now, however, in the fact of increasing Ukrainian resistance in the area and extremely high Russian losses.”
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