Ukrainian drones attacked overnight a weapons depot filled with missiles some 300 miles inside of Russia, releasing a massive fire ball into the nighttime sky, Kyiv officials said — the latest strike on Russian military targets by Ukrainian forces using their own weapons.
Ukraine’s security service, SBU, said Wednesday that military intelligence and special forces carried out the attack, which “literally wiped off the face of the earth” the ammunition warehouses. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The base housed Iskander tactical missiles, Tochka-U missile systems, antiaircraft missiles, artillery ammunition and glide bombs, the official said — among the weapons that have pummeled Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure for much of the year.
Verified videos on social media showed extensive fires and explosions at what posters said was the ammunition storage facility in Toropets in Russia’s Tver region, some 250 miles west of Moscow.
Satellite photos of the town before the attack show a massive complex of what appear to be bunkers and warehouses. NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System showed the whole complex affected by fire on Wednesday morning.
The Tver regional government Telegram channel said that “a fire started as a result of drone debris falling while air defense forces were repelling an attack,” but made no mention of the ammunition storage facility.
Epic BOOM in Tver region of russia tonight, with secondary detonation. Yam. pic.twitter.com/2DpTwXHqJk
— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) September 18, 2024
Tver Gov. Igor Rudenya announced a partial evacuation of the Toropets population of around 11,000, while “air defense forces continue to repel a massive attack by drones in the sky above the city,” the Telegram channel said. Later, Rudenya said that access to Toropets was open and residents could return.
The drone attack took place as Ukrainian officials are lobbying their Western allies hard to allow them to use Western-supplied weapons systems to strike deep within Russia, to destroy precisely these kinds of weapons systems doing so much damage in Ukraine.
Western officials are resisting giving permission for such attacks, saying that this could lead to an escalation in the war, or be less effective than the Ukrainians hope. Kyiv officials, in response, point to attacks like the one carried out on Toropets as evidence that these are effective and pose no extra risk of a Russian response.
Russian military blogger, Mikhail Zvinchuk, who writes under the handle Rybar, rejected the official story that the explosions were caused by falling debris from drones.
“This is obviously not the case,” Zvinchuk wrote on his popular Telegram channel with 1.3 million followers, adding that Ukraine launched drone attacks across Russia, with air defenses operating in the Bryansk, Kursk, Oryol and Smolensk regions.
“Perhaps, if everything that happened was caused by ‘falling debris,’ an investigation has more work to do,” Zvinchuk wrote, adding that the weapons storage complex in Toropets was built in 2018.
