A powerful explosion thundered on the night of Saturday, February 19, in Luhansk. According to the agency Luhanskinformtsentr, the gas pipeline exploded. A video posted on his Telegram channel shows a bright yellow glow illuminating the city at night.
According to information received by the agency from eyewitnesses, the fire is located in the area of the Gorizont plant. According to some reports, an accident occurred at a gas distribution unit near 2nd Belomorskaya Street. Emergency crews were dispatched to the scene.
“At 00:10 (coincides with Moscow time) on February 19, calls began to come in about a major fire on the gas pipeline near Malaya Vergunka, emergency teams of Luganskgaz went to the scene of the incident,” a message posted on the enterprise’s Telegram channel said.
The first explosion was followed by the second
Later, there were reports of another explosion. “There’s another explosion in Lugansk!” – wrote the representative of the “Luhansk People’s Republic” (“LPR”) in the political subgroup of the contact group to resolve the situation in Donbass Rodion Miroshnik in his Telegram channel. According to him, the second explosion occurred in the Kamennobrodsky district of the city.
As the press service of the state unitary enterprise “Luganskgas” later reported, the second explosion occurred at about 00.40 local time. Shortly thereafter, emergency crews arrived at the scene of the incident. According to preliminary information, the gas station became the scene of the incident.
“The Ministry of Emergency Situations of the LPR managed to extinguish the fire as soon as possible. Law enforcement specialists are working on the spot. The causes of the explosion are being investigated,” the press service of Luganskgaz said in a statement.
Tatyana Bogorodko, general director of the company, called both explosions sabotage. According to her, such a conclusion was made after “assessment of the nature of the damage” of the gas pipeline. According to Luganskgaz, 95 subscribers have been temporarily disconnected from the gas supply system.
A third explosion is also reported
The gas pipeline in Luhansk was blown up on Saturday night in at least three places. Such information was provided to TASS by a source in the power structures of the “Lugansk People’s Republic”.
“There were at least three explosions. On Frunze Street in the Malaya Vergunka area, the gas pipeline was blown up in two places. About half an hour later, an explosion occurred on Veselogorovskaya Street in the Kamennobrodsky district,” the agency quotes its interlocutor.
Infrastructure not affected
The explosions that occurred on the gas pipeline in the “LPR” did not affect the operation of the infrastructure, said the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the “LPR” Yevgeny Katsavalov at a meeting in Rostov-on-Don.
“Within an hour, there were two explosions on the gas pipeline. The fires were eliminated. They did not affect the infrastructure,” he told reporters.
Naftogaz claims no involvement in the explosions
The Naftogaz company denies allegations of Ukraine’s involvement in the explosion of a gas pipeline near Luhansk. According to its director Yuriy Vitrenko, Ukraine has nothing to do with the explosion of the gas pipeline in the Luhansk region, since it has not belonged to it since 2014, it is disconnected from the united gas transportation system of Ukraine and is not used for transit and gas supplies to the country, which was proven in the Stockholm Arbitration. He wrote about this on his Facebook account.
Against the background of the buildup of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine
In recent days, the situation in the Donbass has escalated against the background of the buildup of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine. OSCE observers on the evening of February 16 – on the morning of February 17 recorded about 500 explosions near the line of contact in eastern Ukraine. This is several times more than the values of the previous days. On February 18, it was reported that the car of Denis Sinenkov, the head of the “DPR People’s Militia”, was blown up in the center of Donetsk. He himself was not hurt. Kiev and the separatists blame each other for escalating tensions.
A massive Russian troop build-up, numbering some 150,000 according to Western sources, has been fueling fears for weeks about a Russian invasion of Ukraine under some pretext. Moscow denies such claims and, for its part, says it feels threatened by NATO.
See also:
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of the CIS
In December 1991, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus documented the collapse of the USSR. Moscow obviously hoped to maintain its influence through the CIS and cheap gas supplies. But it turned out differently. The Russian Federation and Belarus created a union state, Ukraine increasingly looked to the West. In the photo: Leonid Kravchuk, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Boris Yeltsin and Stanislav Shushkevich during the official founding of the CIS in Almaty.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Legacy of the USSR and the Budapest Memorandum
Ukraine inherited from the USSR almost a million strong army and the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Kiev refused the missiles, handing them over to Russia in exchange for economic assistance and security guarantees (Budapest Memorandum of 1994). While the West did not reciprocate Kiev and was not going to integrate it into its structures, the reaction of the Russian Federation was restrained. In the photo: Russian and US leaders Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Cracks in Post-Soviet Friendship: Tuzla Conflict
The first major diplomatic crisis between Moscow and Kiev occurred under President Putin. In the fall of 2003, Russia suddenly began building a dam in the Kerch Strait towards the Ukrainian island of Tuzla. Kiev considered this an attempt to redistribute borders. The conflict was resolved after a personal meeting of the presidents. Construction was stopped, but the first cracks appeared on the facade of friendly relations between the two countries.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Orange Revolution 2004
In the presidential elections in Ukraine in 2004, the Russian Federation actively supported the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych, but the Orange Revolution prevented him from winning amid accusations of fraud. Pro-Western politician Viktor Yushchenko became president. His victory became the starting point for changes in the policy of the Russian Federation, designed to prevent what Moscow calls “color revolutions.”
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Shutting off Ukraine’s “gas valve” in the 2000s
During Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency, the Russian Federation twice shut off Ukraine’s “gas valve” – in 2006 and 2009, which led to interruptions in transit supplies to Europe. In the photo: a Gazprom employee at the Sudzha gas measuring station, 200 meters from the Ukrainian border, Kursk Region, Russia, 2009.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
The promise of NATO membership
The key event happened in 2008. At the NATO summit in Bucharest, US President George W. Bush tried to get Ukraine and Georgia to receive a Membership Action Plan (MAP). Putin sharply objected, making it clear that he did not fully recognize the independence of Ukraine. As a result, Germany and France blocked Bush’s plan. Ukraine and Georgia were promised NATO membership, but no date.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Ukraine’s course towards the European Union
It was not possible to move quickly towards joining NATO, and Ukraine set a course for economic rapprochement with the EU. In the summer of 2013, the Russian Federation began to exert massive pressure on Kiev, almost cutting off Ukrainian exports at the border. The Yanukovych government has suspended preparations for signing an association agreement with Brussels. Soon protests began in Ukraine, in February 2014 Yanukovych fled to Russia.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Russian annexation of Crimea
A power vacuum emerged in Ukraine, in March 2014 Russia annexed Crimea. This was a turning point, the beginning of an undeclared war. Photo: Russian military in Crimea (Simferopol, March 2014).
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
War in Donbass
At the same time, Russian and local paramilitary structures provoked an outbreak of separatism in the Donbass, “people’s republics” were proclaimed in Donetsk and Lugansk, which were led by people who had come from the Russian Federation in unmarked uniforms. Kiev reacted slowly, waiting for the presidential elections at the end of May 2014, and only then decided on a large-scale use of force.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Birth of the Normandy Format
In early June 2014, in France, at events marking the 70th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, newly elected President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko met for the first time with his Russian counterpart Putin through the mediation of the leaders of Germany and France. This is how the “Norman format” was born.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
“Ilovaisky cauldron”
In the summer of 2014, the Ukrainian army began to push back the separatists, but at the end of August, Russia, according to Kiev, used its army on a large scale in the Donbass. Moscow denies this. The peak of the conflict was the defeat of the Ukrainian forces near Ilovaisk. The war along the entire front line ended with the signing of a ceasefire in Minsk in September, which was quickly broken.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
Positional war continues
In early 2015, the separatists went on a broad offensive. Kiev accused Moscow of using an unmarked army, the Russian Federation denied everything. Ukrainian forces were defeated near the city of Debaltseve. Then, with the mediation of Germany and France, “Minsk-2” was signed, an agreement that still remains the main document for the settlement of the conflict. None of its points has been fully implemented.
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A Brief History of the Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation
The concentration of Russian troops on the border of Ukraine
In 2021, there was a new aggravation. Russia twice, in spring and autumn, drew up its troops to the western borders. Ukrainian and Western intelligence reports about the threat of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. To defuse the situation, a series of international negotiations took place in the West. However, the Russian Federation demands guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO and lets know that it is not going to withdraw troops yet.
Author: Roman Goncharenko
