Russia-Ukraine war: Video shows vacuum bombs fall on residential blocks in Donetsk

Horrific footage shows thermobaric bombs being dropped on residential blocks, as an anti-war Russian journalist is placed under arrest. WATCH VIDEO

Terrifying footage shows thermobaric bombs exterminate entire blocks of housing in the Ukraine city of Donetsk.

The weapons, dubbed 'vacuum bombs’ because they fuel air explosions capable of disintegrating everything in their surrounds, reportedly obliterated an entire town on Thursday.

The village of Pisky, in eastern Ukraine, became a fireball as it came under fire.

The use of the weapons is banned under the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

The video shared by pro-Russian accounts on Telegram messaging app comes as Ukraine said Russia was pursuing a campaign of bombardment of the east of the country that has left much of the industrial Donbas region in ruins.

Vacuum bombs fall in the village of Pisky, Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.

Kyiv said on Tuesday it had transported at least 3000 people out of the battle-scarred eastern region of Donetsk since it ordered evacuations ahead of winter.

The Ukrainian authorities are asking people to leave the area, as they do not expect to be able to provide it with heat during the cold winter months.

The presidency earlier said that three people had been killed and 19 more wounded in Russian shelling across the Donetsk region on Monday.

The head of the central region of Dnipro, meanwhile, said that 11 medical facilities had relocated there from the battle-torn Kharkiv and Lugansk regions further east.

“Those facilities transferred over 100 pieces of equipment and 10 ambulances,” Dnipro regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

“The hospitals are restarting work. They are mostly receiving displaced people.”

‘GRAVE’ CRISIS AT EUROPE’S LARGEST NUCLEAR PLANT

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog has warned an emergency Security Council meeting of the “grave” crisis unfolding at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, as Moscow and Kyiv traded accusations of new shelling near the facility.

“This is a serious hour, a grave hour,” Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security Council on Thursday local time, adding that the IAEA must urgently be allowed to conduct a mission to Zaporizhzhia.

And in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of “nuclear blackmail” as he urged the international community “to react immediately to chase out the occupiers from Zaporizhzhia.”

“Only the Russians’ full withdrawal … would guarantee nuclear safety for all of Europe,” Mr Zelenskyy said in a video address to the nation.

Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of new shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Thursday, a dangerous escalation five months into the war.

Both sides said there were five rocket strikes near a radioactive material storage area at the plant, Europe’s biggest nuclear facility which has been a focus of renewed fighting in recent days.

Ukraine’s nuclear agency Energoatom said later there had been fresh Russian shelling near one of the plant’s six reactors that had caused “extensive smoke” and “several radiation sensors are damaged”.

ANTI-WAR JOURNALIST UNDER ARREST

A Russian court has placed former state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who denounced President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine live on air, under house arrest until October.

Investigators detained Ms Ovsyannikova, 44, on Wednesday local time and charged her with spreading information about the Russian armed forces deemed false by the government.

The mother of two faces up to 10 years in prison, if convicted.

In March, Ms Ovsyannikova, then an editor at Channel One television, made global headlines when she barged onto the set of its flagship Vremya (Time) evening news, holding a poster reading “No War”.

Marina Ovsyannikova inside a defendants’ box during a court session. Picture: AFP

The house arrest is not connected to that particular protest, however. It is linked to a one-woman protest in mid-July near the Kremlin, when Ms Ovsyannikova held a poster that read “Putin is a murderer, his soldiers are fascists”.

Three “blood-soaked” toy dolls were laid on the ground in front of her.

At Moscow’s Basmanny district court on Thursday, she was placed in a cage surrounded by several policemen.

She held a sign that read “May the dead children haunt you in your dreams”.

Her lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov wrote on messaging app Telegram that “even” the Soviet Union’s most brutal serial killer Andrei Chikatilo was not guarded so closely.

Marina Ovsyannikova escorted by police before a court session over charges of “discrediting” the Russian army. Picture: AFP

During a closed-door hearing, the court ruled that Ms Ovsyannkova be placed under house arrest until October 9.

“I even don’t know what to say. Good that it is not jail? Certainly good,” Ms Zakhvatov said.

“But it is still sickening.”

Criticism of Mr Putin’s decision to send troops to Ukraine on February 24 has been virtually outlawed in Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron has offered Ms Ovsyannikova, who worked for Russian state TV for 19 years, asylum or other forms of consular protection.

– additional reporting AFP