AP) — Ukrainian and British officials warned Saturday that Russian forces are relying on weapons with the potential to cause mass casualties as they try to make headway in capturing eastern Ukraine.
Russian bombers have likely been launching heavy 1960s-era anti-ship missiles in Ukraine, the U.K. Defense Ministry said. The Kh-22 missiles were primarily designed to destroy aircraft carriers using a nuclear warhead. When used in ground attacks with conventional warheads, they “are highly inaccurate and therefore can cause severe collateral damage and casualties,” the ministry said.
Both sides have expended large amounts of weaponry in what has become a grinding war of attrition for the eastern region of coal mines and factories known as the Donbas, placing huge strains on their resources and stockpiles.
Russia is likely using the anti-ship missiles because it is running short of more precise modern missiles, the British ministry said in a daily update. It gave no details of where exactly such missiles are thought to have been deployed and there was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian authorities of the use of the 5.5-tonne (6.1-ton) missiles.
A Ukrainian regional governor has accused Russia of using incendiary weapons in the village of Vrubivka in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk province, southwest of the fiercely contested cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
While the use of flamethrowers on the battlefield is legal, Serhii Haidai, governor of Luhansk province, alleged the attacks overnight caused widespread damage to civilian facilities.
“Information about the number of victims in Vrubivka, in the Popasnyanska district, is being specified. At night, the enemy used a flamethrower rocket system – many houses burnt down,” Haidai wrote on Telegram on Saturday morning.
He also said that Russian forces continued their assault on Sievierodonetsk and were destroying critical industrial facilities, including railway depots, a brick factory and a glass factory in neighboring Lysychansk.
“(Russians are) destroying world-famous factories. Thousands of Sievierodonetsk residents dream of returning and crossing the first checkpoint at Azot (a chemical plant), but the enemy is destroying both the city itself and the chemical industry,” he said.
