A series of powerful explosions early on Wednesday morning, September 18, destroyed a large ammunition depot adjacent to the town of Toropets in the Tver region. The depot was hit by shells fired by the Ukrainian militaryHE The Russian army’s 107 is located 500 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border and stores 240 tons of ammunition. The explosions were so powerful that they were detected by seismic monitoring systems. The first tremor measuring 2.8 was recorded at 03:56, followed by seven smaller tremors measuring between 2 and 2.8 on the Richter scale.
Multiple videos taken by local residents and Russian soldiers have extensively documented the massive mushroom cloud rising into the air and its aftermath. Russian authorities reported seventeen people injured. A video taken at around 8 a.m. by a Toropets resident (population 11,000) shows dozens of houses with blown-out windows. A few hours after the attack, continuous explosions can be heard, signaling that the situation at the depot is spiraling out of control. Satellite images released by the private American space company Maxar show the forest on the edge of the depot continuing to burn for part of the day.
The unprecedented measures taken by the Ukrainian army have, of course, nothing to do with the extent of the damage. According to a military source in Kiev, more than a hundred drones took part in the operation, the news site reported. RBK-UkraineThe distinctive whistling of jet engines can be clearly heard in several videos of the attack, suggesting that the strike was at least partly carried out by cruise missiles. Until now, strikes deep inside Russian territory have been carried out using propeller-driven drones, which are much slower and therefore easier to shoot down by anti-aircraft defenses (AA).
“Falling drone debris”
In these two short videos, we hear neither the crackle of automatic weapons nor the firing of surface-to-air missiles; this does not mean that the Russian DAA remains inactive. A statement collected by Russian media in exile Novayagazeta.eu He stated that he did not hear any DAA sounds.
The pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Military Observer suggests that the Ukrainian missile is perhaps the new Palianitsya “drone-missile” that Volodymyr Zelensky announced the first successful test of at the end of August. The specialized Ukrainian site Defense Express is leaning more towards the Ukrainian-made Neptune missile (with three times the explosive charge) in a modernized version.
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