Ukrainian drone attack triggers earthquake-sized blast at Russian arsenal

A large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on Russia triggered an earthquake-sized blast at a major arsenal in the Tver region on Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of a nearby town, war bloggers and some media reported.

Unverified video and images on social media showed a huge ball of flame blasting high into the night sky and multiple detonations thundering across a lake about 380 kilometers west of Moscow.

NASA satellites picked up intense heat sources emanating from an area of about 14 square kilometers at the site in the early hours and earthquake monitoring stations picked up what sensors thought was a small earthquake in the area.

"The enemy hit an ammunition depot in the area of Toropets," said Yuri Podolyaka, a Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger. "Everything that can burn is already burning there and exploding."

Igor Rudenya, the governor of the Tver region, said that Ukrainian drones had been shot down, that a fire had broken out and that some residents were being evacuated. He did not say what was burning.

Rudenya later said the situation in Toropets was stable and that evacuated residents could return. The fire had been put out and there were no recorded fatalities, he said.

A source in Ukraine's SBU state security service told Reuters the drone attack had destroyed a warehouse storing missiles, guided bombs and artillery ammunition. There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian government.

Russia and Ukraine each reported dozens of enemy drone attacks on their territory overnight, with Russian forces advancing in eastern Ukraine.

Major explosion

The size of the main blast shown in the unverified social media video was consistent with 200-240 tons of high explosives detonating, said George William Herbert of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.

A Toropets chatroom on the Russian social media site VK was flooded with messages of support from other parts of the country and offers of help to people fleeing the town.

Some people were asking whether buildings at specific addresses were still standing.

"People, does anyone know what's happened to Kudino village??? They told me nothing is left of our house," posted one woman.

Another woman replied: "It's horror there." Kudino is a village 4.5 kilometers northeast of Toropets.

Anger and confusion

Some war bloggers questioned how drones could trigger such large explosions at what was thought to be a highly fortified facility.

According to an RIA state news agency report from 2018, Russia was building an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets, a 1,000-year-old town, which has a population of just over 11,000.

Dmitry Bulgakov, then a deputy defense minister, told RIA in 2018 that the facility could defend weapons from missiles and even a small nuclear attack. Bulgakov was arrested earlier this year on corruption charges, which he denies.

"It (the concrete facilities) ensures their reliable and safe storage, protects them from air and missile strikes and even from the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion," RIA quoted Bulgakov as saying at the time.

Russia reported that its air defense units had destroyed 54 drones launched against five Russian regions overnight, without mentioning Tver. Ukraine said it had shot down 46 of 52 drones launched by Moscow overnight and that Russia had used three guided air missiles which did not reach their targets.

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