2024-09-20 06:44:31
Since the beginning of the Russian aggression, the Ukrainians have hit many Russian airports, factories, oil storage facilities, weapons depots and military bases with drones. But Wednesday’s strike on Toropets in the Tver region near Moscow surpassed everything so far.
The Russian ammunition warehouse in Toropec exploded massively after the attack by Ukrainian drones. | Video: Reuters
Satellite images show huge clouds of smoke and witnesses in the area said it looked like an earthquake. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced a major strategic success in the evening, the Russian authorities evacuated neighborhoods and villages from the warehouse area.
A source from the Ukrainian secret service SBU said that the attack destroyed, among other things, stocks of Iskander missiles. They carry a warhead weighing more than half a ton, have a range of up to 500 kilometers and, if not stopped by Ukrainian air defenses, cause massacres of civilians and massive damage. For example, last June an Iskander missile leveled a restaurant in Kramatorsk and thirteen people died on the spot.
In Toropec, the Russians also stored Točka-U missiles and artillery ammunition. The detonations were chained and gradually spread throughout the campus. It is not confirmed that KN-23 missiles, which are supplied to Russia by North Korea, were also present at the site.
Toropec is located over 500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, the attack was apparently carried out by hundreds of Ukrainian drones. It was an unprecedentedly massive attack on one target, Russian air defenses apparently failed completely.
The service of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which monitors fires on Earth via satellites, has noticed a large focus of fires near Toropka. Anatolik Khrapchynskiy, a Ukrainian army analyst and expert on the Russian Air Force, told the Liga.net server that Ukraine has been successful in these strikes and more can be expected. And even close to Moscow.
“We would be hard-pressed to find a more important airport and warehouse in Russia like the one in Toropec. It is a large facility from which they distribute ammunition and weapons to a number of smaller ones. It will reduce the ability of the Russians to attack from the air. Closer to Moscow is a large Arsenal-53 base, where they store many rockets and missiles. There is still something to attack and something to destroy,” said Khrapchynsky.
In an interview with the daily Aktuálně.cz, Major of the Ukrainian Army Ihor Lapin said that Kyiv needs to transfer the war to Russian territory as much as possible so that the Russians feel its consequences. “They normally have electricity, they normally go to work, to cinemas and theaters, while our cities face bombing and we have problems with electricity supplies. They must also feel what war is. Germany would not have lost in 1945 if the Soviet Union and other countries had not transferred war on his soil,” he says.
In the summer of 2022, the Ukrainians began using American HIMARS missiles against Russian warehouses and bases in occupied Ukrainian territories. In doing so, they forced the leadership of the Russian military to withdraw weapons and ammunition into Russia, and now they are putting pressure on the Russians to withdraw even deeper.
That is why, for example, Engels Airport, from which Russian bombers take off for airstrikes against Ukraine, has become a repeated target of Ukrainian strikes. It is located more than eight hundred kilometers from Ukrainian territory controlled by Kyiv.
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