With continuous attacks from one side to the other within the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine , in recent hours the latter have accused the former of using thermobaric bombs, also known as vacuum bombs , which would mean a serious war crime. being prohibited by the Geneva Convention .
From 1864 to 1950, as a result of the First and Second World Wars, up to four agreements were signed in the city of Geneva (Switzerland) that regulate what is now international human law . A series of rules that seek to protect the victims of armed conflicts and that in the case of conflicts such as the one being waged by Russia and Ukraine, their respect is essential, in order, among other issues, not to massacre defenseless civilians.
Something that for Ukraine would be violating Russia through vacuum pumps. A weapon created at the end of the 20th century and that seeks to extract oxygen from an area to create a great explosion that suffocates the living beings present and can even vaporize human bodies.
Russia has already used these vacuum bombs in other wars
The Ukrainian ambassador in Washington, Oksana Markarova , has been the last great personality to denounce this fact, which is considered a war crime, thus joining media such as CNN , The Guardian , The Telegraph or even Amnesty International. According to these, Russian troops with TOS-1 missile launchers , capable of loading these thermobaric bombs, have been witnessing for a few days.
And it is that in the last 40 years Russia has been demonstrating that it has this weapon in its arsenal and so I used it in the war of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s or in the two wars in Chechnya to subdue this region now under your control . In addition, in February 2020, the state agency RT broadcast a video in which vehicles could be seen carrying out military maneuvers armed with up to 24 vacuum projectiles.
How does a vacuum pump work?
Even having the world’s largest specimen, which was tested in 2007 and named the ‘ Father of All Bombs ‘, in response to the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ that the United States devised in 2003, these vacuum have a mechanism as simple as it is deadly.
Being able to be used both in open and closed spaces, they are made up of two explosive charges that spread a cloud of fuel that mixes with oxygen and then detonates this fuel that consumes the oxygen and creates the feeling of emptiness through the explosion at high temperature. It is with this phenomenon that oxygen is extracted, which leads to suffocation or incineration of humans close to the detonation.