A series of powerful explosions destroyed a large ammunition depot adjacent to the town of Toropets in the Tver region in the early hours of Wednesday, September 18. Hit by shells fired by the Ukrainian army, the 107th arsenal of the Russian army 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 tremors of magnitude 2.8 were recorded at 3:56 a.m., followed by seven smaller tremors, ranging from 2 to 2.8 on the Richter scale.
Numerous videos filmed by Russian residents and soldiers have amply documented the huge mushroom cloud rising into the air and its aftermath. Russian authorities reported 17 injuries. A video recorded at around 8 a.m. by a resident of Toropets (population 11,000) shows dozens of houses with their windows smashed. Incessant explosions can be heard, indicating that several hours after the attack the situation at the depot was still out of control. Satellite images released by the private US space company Maxar show that the forest bordering the depot continued to burn for part of the day.
The unprecedented means applied by the Ukrainian military are certainly not unrelated to the scale of the damage. More than 100 drones were involved in the operation, according to a military source in kyiv quoted by the RBK-Ukraïna news site. In several videos of the attack, the characteristic whistling of jet engines can be clearly heard, suggesting that the attack was carried out, at least in part, with cruise missiles. Until now, attacks on Russian deep waters had been carried out using propeller-driven drones, which were much slower and therefore easier to shoot down by anti-aircraft (AA) defence.
“Drone debris falling”
In these two short videos, neither the crackle of automatic weapons nor the firing of surface-to-air missiles can be heard, which does not mean that the Russian DAA has remained passive. A testimony collected by the Russian media in exile Novayagazeta.eu indicates that no DAA shots were heard.
The pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Observateur Militaire suggests that the Ukrainian projectile is perhaps the new “missile drone” The Palianitsya missile, of which Volodymyr Zelensky had announced a successful first test at the end of August, is more likely to be tested by Ukrainian specialist website Defence Express, which is leaning more towards a Ukrainian-made Neptune missile (with three times the explosive charge), in a modernised version.
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