This is the moment a Russian tank armed with thermobaric warheads is blown to smithereens by a Ukrainian kamikaze drone.
Devastating video shows the TOS-1 or TOS-1A – a multiple rocket launcher equipped with thermobaric warheads – trundling along a dirt path near Vuhledar, a town to the southwest of the city of Donetsk.
In a flash, the Russian military vehicle erupts into a huge fireball.
A blazing inferno rises into the sky after the explosion sparks a massive blast wave that spreads out across the surrounding fields.
A smouldering wreckage is all that remains of the Russian equipment in yet another humiliating blow to Vladimir Putin’s spluttering invasion of Ukraine.
The scale of the explosion is being attributed to the thermobaric warheads on board the tank.
Thermobaric weapons, which consist of a fuel container and two separate explosive charges, have been described by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation as the “biggest non-nuclear bombs”.
The nonprofit explains: “When a volumetric weapon is dropped or launched, the first charge detonates to disperse the fuel particles.
“The second charge ignites the dispersed fuel and oxygen in the air, creating a blast wave of extreme pressure and heat that has the potential to reverberate and to create a partial vacuum in an enclosed space.”
The Pentagon has previously said that Russian mobile launchers for thermobaric weapons were spotted inside Ukraine, but couldn’t confirm their use.
Russia has consistently denied using these weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have also accused Russia of using cluster munitions, accusations the Kremlin has denied.
However, an international watchdog found that more than 300 people were killed and over 600 wounded by cluster munitions in Ukraine in 2022, surpassing Syria as the country with the highest number of casualties from the controversial weapons for the first time in a decade.
Russia’s widespread use of the bombs, which open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets or submunitions as they are called, in its invasion of Ukraine — and, to a lesser extent, their use by Ukrainian forces — helped make 2022 the deadliest year on record globally, according to the annual report released Tuesday by the Cluster Munition Coalition, a network of non-governmental organizations advocating for a ban of the weapons.
Such weapons are designed to target enemy troops and weapons over a broad area, and their use in populated areas inevitably would lead to mass casualties among civilians.
Cluster bombs, rockets and artillery shells open in the air, releasing submunitions, or “bomblets” that are dispersed over a large area and simultaneously hit multiple targets.
Beyond the initial impact, bomblets have a high rate of failure to explode, posing a long-time threat of killing and maiming people for a long time after they were fired.
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