Explosions in Balakleya: who benefits? Explosions at ammunition depots in Balakleya. Main Arson in Balakleya

Two years ago there was already an attempt to set fire to the warehouse.

On the night of Thursday, March 23, at 2:45 am in the city of Balakleya, in the Kharkov region, one of the largest ammunition depots exploded. Information about this first appeared on social networks, and was later confirmed by the authorities.

So, immediately after the explosion, local residents began to leave Balakleya. People traveled outside the city by all available means. Also the authorities began evacuation of residents from a 5-kilometer zone around military warehouses. 2 evacuation points were opened at the district cultural center and school. People were evacuated by buses.

It also became known that two years ago there was already an attempt to set fire to the largest ammunition depot, but then the military managed to prevent the attempt.

Now a commission headed by the Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Igor Pavlovsky, officers of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has flown to the scene of the incident.

The chief military prosecutor of Ukraine, Anatoly Matios, said that a fire at military warehouses in Balakleya, Kharkov region occurred due to sabotage. According to him, this is evidenced by the preliminary results of investigative actions, which were reported to Matios by the military prosecutor of the Kharkov garrison (which is located at the scene of the event).

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Please note that there is no information yet about those killed or injured as a result of the explosion and fire.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a coordination headquarters for extinguishing the fire was deployed on the spot and special equipment and fire departments of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were involved. Also, units of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and over 20 ambulances were sent to the scene of the incident.

Around 3 a.m., March 23, in Balakleya, Kharkov region, at one of the largest ammunition depots in Ukraine. The warehouses where 138 thousand tons of shells are stored were engulfed in fire, which could not be contained after more than half a day. 19 thousand people were evacuated from the danger zone; it is known that one woman was wounded in the temple by a shell fragment.

According to the Ministry of Defense, by lunchtime the area of ​​the fire had increased. About 400 rescuers and 50 pieces of equipment were involved in extinguishing it, and 25 ambulances were on duty at the scene.

Earlier it was reported that residents of houses close to the warehouses were hiding in bomb shelters in the hope of waiting out the explosions, and the roads leaving the city were crowded.

The explosion at the warehouses in Balakleya was classified as sabotage, and a version of negligence towards the duties of workers is also being considered, said the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoly Matios. According to him, witnesses saw the art warehouse in Balakleya with aircraft dropped the means that provoked the explosions.

“Before the explosion, there was a rumble from the aircraft, after which an explosion occurred. It is hardly necessary to talk about an accident, but we are obliged to consider both versions. I will note that for last years Encroachments on ammunition depots occurred repeatedly,” said Matios. Several criminal cases have been initiated.

Advisor to the Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Ivan Varchenko stated that it may take 2-3 days to extinguish the fire, so it is too early to say when residents will be able to return to their homes.

Video: Reuters

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Eyewitnesses reported that as a result of the shell explosions, glass was broken in almost all houses. President of the country Petro Poroshenko ordered to provide local residents building materials, diesel fuel, food, and also send construction teams for repair and restoration work.

Prime Minister of the country Vladimir Groysman flew to the scene of the incident. His press secretary published a video of what was happening from above.

According to the Prime Minister, at 17.30 Minsk time, 50% of the warehouse area was engulfed in fire. Groysman also talked with evacuated citizens. 36 thousand people live in the potential danger area.

Operational headquarters at the scene of the incident. Photo: dsns.gov.ua

Around three in the morning, a large-scale fire broke out at the largest military base where a classified amount of weapons is stored.

After the fire, ammunition began to detonate and explode, which increased the danger radius. According to the military prosecutor's office, a quarter of the stock in the warehouse has already exploded.

Rescuers and firefighters immediately rushed to the scene. An emergency response headquarters will be deployed on site. A commission headed by Deputy Defense Minister Igor Pavlovsky, officers from the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff also flew to the base.

Evacuations are currently underway from the city itself and two nearby settlements. We have already managed to remove about 20 thousand people. The movement of passenger transport through the Balakleya railway station has been suspended. The police also began blocking roads and setting up roadblocks. Ukraerorukh temporarily closed the sky within a radius of 40 kilometers from the fire site.

Ukrzaliznytsia fire trains were sent to localize and extinguish the fire at the military warehouses of the city of Balakleya. 250 personnel and 50 pieces of equipment were brought in from the State Emergency Service, and reserve forces and equipment, including pyrotechnic crews, were put on alert.

There is no information yet about deaths or injuries as a result of the fire.

Cause of explosions

The military prosecutor's office admits two versions of the cause of the base fire - negligence and sabotage. Latest version is a priority.

According to military prosecutor Anatoly Matios, last year an inspection was carried out of the conditions of detention and compliance with safety requirements at the arsenal in Balakleya, and after that the number of guards was increased.

"It is hardly necessary to talk about negligence; the priority version is sabotage", he said at a briefing.

In addition, according to witnesses, the flight of a drone was heard before the two explosions. According to Matios, the drone could have dropped homemade incendiary devices, because under similar circumstances, explosions had previously occurred at ammunition depots in Zaporozhye and Svatovo.

Russian trace

The Ministry of Defense does not exclude the possibility of Russian involvement in the incident. Minister Stepan Poltorak noted that the Ministry sees many signs that indicate that the fire in the warehouses started as a result of sabotage. In particular, this is also said by the employees who were at the scene during the incident.

“The characteristics of the actions that took place indicate that a sabotage group was working there. It couldn’t have been a short circuit, because it’s on the street, there’s no electricity, there can’t be grass burning there,” Poltorak concluded.

The fire has now spread to a third of the base area. So far, the fire has not been localized due to constant fire, and the evacuation radius of the population of Balakleya has been increased to 10 kilometers.

Impact on the combat effectiveness of the army

Since the fire occurred at one of the largest ammunition bases in Ukraine, the public panicked that the Ukrainian army would be left without weapons against the Russian aggressor.

However, the military prosecutor’s office assures that the fire will not affect the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian army, because recently an arsenal of ammunition worth more than 7 billion UAH was transferred to the Ministry of Defense. In addition, not all the weapons of the Ukrainian army are located in the Kharkov region; they are dispersed across many warehouses in the country.

Ammunition in Ukrainian warehouses explodes on the eve of an audit

According to the testimony of my friends living in the regional center of Rovenki in the Belgorod region, located in a straight line at a distance of up to two hundred kilometers from Balakleya, even their windows shook. People called each other and asked: are we already being bombed? And this, as it turned out later, detonation of warehouses with Tochka-U and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) began, and giant explosive “mushrooms” rose into the sky above Balakleya.

A fire at an ammunition depot in Balakleya, Kharkov region, began on the night of Thursday, March 23. Due to the detonation of ammunition, the authorities evacuated about 36 thousand residents in a ten-kilometer zone (up to 20 thousand on the first day).

And although the next day official Kyiv reported that the fire had been extinguished, ammunition exploded on the territory of the military arsenal on March 25, although less often - one explosion every five minutes. On the fourth day, and now the frequency of explosions began to be 15-20 minutes.

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reports that the fires have been completely eliminated, but rescuers claim the opposite.

Let's say a few words about Balakleya. This is a nice suburban city, with long-standing (from the 16th–17th centuries) Russian military traditions; a military town was located here for decades in Soviet times. From 1796 to 1891, the settlement was called Novo-Serpukhov (or Novoserpukhovsky) - after the name of the stationed regiment that arrived from Serpukhov near Moscow. The Germans occupied Balakleya in December 1941 (Kharkov - in October). During the period of German occupation, the Balakleyevsky partisan detachment was created from local residents and began to operate. As the front line approached Balakleya, he, together with the Red Army, attacked the regional center and held the defense area in the area of ​​the water station for two days. The city is located on the left bank of the Seversky Donets River at the confluence of the Extreme Balakleyka, Srednyaya Balakleyka and Volosskaya Balakleyka rivers into the Balakleyka River and its confluence with the Seversky Donets. They pass through the city car roads T-2105, T-2110 and railway, Moscow-Donbass line.

Some Ukrainian media claim that from 20 to 30% of all ammunition of the Ukrainian army was stored in Balakleya - a total of 182 thousand tons, with the rated capacity of warehouses being 150 thousand tons, including shells for the Akatsiya self-propelled gun with a range of up to 20 km. About 7.5 thousand tons of ammunition in the warehouse were subject to disposal. total area The arsenal is 680 hectares, the area of ​​the technical territory is 368 hectares, the perimeter length is 8.5 km. According to unverified data, chemical munitions could also be stored in Balakleya. It was also written that the warehouses near Balakleya are the largest in Ukraine, stretching underground for almost 15 kilometers; entire trains with shells can enter the underground storage facilities. Large-caliber ship shells are also stored there. Advisor to the Minister of Defense Biryukov posted on Facebook calls not to create panic and notified the public that the warehouse had nine underground floors, and the bulk of the ammunition that the Ukrainian Armed Forces needed was securely hidden under a layer of concrete. And it explodes - “garbage”.

Accounts with cuts of extreme amateur video footage from Balakleya are periodically deleted (apparently by moderators) and reappear on popular social networks. Indeed, the impression is eerie: either rockets (reportedly surface-to-air) are burning brightly, flying chaotically and falling into residential buildings and farms, or a terrible mushroom of an explosion rises over the unfortunate Balakleya.

Resources “Russian Spring”, “Tsargrad” and “Channel 5”, citing their sources, report that background radiation has increased significantly in Balakleya - acceptable standards have already been exceeded many times over.

“There are no nuclear weapons in Balakleya, of course, just like in the whole of Ukraine. Therefore, rumors about a secret warehouse of nuclear weapons, even at the tactical level, are nonsense. But there are shells with cores made of depleted uranium. And in the event of explosions such as there now, this depleted uranium can “dirty” the ground, air and increase the background,” said one of the former officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Earlier, a message was posted on the official website of Balakleya about the presence in the region of “several objects that create radiation risks.”

One can agree with the judgment that the explosion in Balakleya shows: the renunciation of nuclear weapons is the best thing that happened in the history of modern Ukraine.

Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine I. Pavlovsky said that to clear the territory of the military arsenal in Balakleya, Kharkov region, specialists will need up to two months, “because the mass of ammunition that is currently being processed by the State Emergency Service in the city, in populated areas, in the adjacent territory, the bulk ammunition that exploded remained in this area.” The general added that after clearing the mines and eliminating the consequences of the detonation of the arsenal, the military unit in Balakleya will not be liquidated and will continue to serve.

The Ministry of Defense sent a special commission to the scene of events under the leadership of Deputy Minister for Armaments Pavlovsky, operational groups of the SBU, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the military prosecutor's office. Prime Minister Groysman flew to the scene of the emergency for some reason.

But Ukraine itself, as they explain, cannot cope with the disaster and demining, so NATO representatives began to arrive in Balakleya, which is allowed by Poroshenko’s decree, for “humanitarian demining” of the military base. The Chairman of the Kharkov State Administration, Yu. Svetlichnaya, announced this on television.

In the first days of the incident, the head of the emergency response department, P. Korotinsky, reported that rescuers could not use aircraft and equipment to extinguish the fire due to the continued detonation of shells. “The ammunition explodes and scatters, the range of dispersion is 0.5 - 1 km,” he said. “They use firefighting tanks from the Ministry of Defense, there is a special team that has armored vehicles that can go there and carry out the necessary work.”

Later, sappers managed to clear five sectors of the city. The State Emergency Service reports that a total of 820 explosive objects have been discovered since the start of work. 75 explosives experts and 27 units of special equipment were involved in the demining work; a group of forces with a total number of more than 2.6 thousand people and 236 units of equipment was concentrated in the emergency zone; on railway station Shebelinka has two fire trains on duty.

Some of the warehouses, judging by the map from space, jut out at an angle into the residential area of ​​the regional center. The city is cut off from gas supply, traffic has been suspended at the Balakleya railway station, which, including the station building, was heavily damaged by shrapnel. The city website of Balakleya reported that the dairy plant was badly damaged, there was a noticeable leak of ammonia and chlorine, a gas station in the village of Neftyanikov was blown up, residential buildings in the village of Verbovka were on fire, and the 110th microdistrict was badly damaged. The fragments reached the village of Camp.

Traffic is prohibited in areas adjacent to the explosion site road transport. The police set up 14 roadblocks to divert vehicles at the approaches to the evacuation zone. The local population was evacuated from the villages of Verbovka and Yakovenkovo ​​and Balakleya itself. A radius of 50 km from the epicenter of the explosions has been declared an emergency zone. The airspace is closed at a distance of 40 km from the event.

Officially, the evacuation was announced for seven days. But many residents settled in the basements. There were bad reports on social networks that for the evacuation of “horseless people” private owners charged 4,000 hryvnia (UAH) per nose (that’s three to four monthly pensions, or approximately two salaries of doctors and teachers), and for providing a place in the basement - from 200 to 400 UAH To get on the evacuation bus, you had to pay 70 UAH.

The facts of monetary extortions from those in distress horrified Russian users of social networks, where one could read the following responses: “We learned from the same ABC books. But something happened to the brothers over these 25 years. Can you imagine that in Ryazan or Rostov they took money from neighbors for the opportunity to hide from explosions in the basement?

Already on March 24, five casualties were reported, three of them were hospitalized. Rescuers found a woman born in 1951 under the rubble of a private house.

They wrote on social networks that 70 wounded were brought from Balakleya to the regional center of Zmiev and the village of Komsomolsky, about whom the Kiev officialdom is silent. M. Mishina wrote on Facebook: “I’m coming from Zmiev. All trains in this direction go to Shebelinka. This is between Zmiev and Balakleya. The wounded were finally delivered to Zmiev. A woman from Verbovka sits nearby. I went to get documents and feed the dogs, but never made it home. In front of me, fellow villagers call her that people are robbing stores.”

Many residents of Balakleya are afraid to leave their apartments for fear of property theft. To maintain law and order and prevent looting in the area, units of the National Guard organized the work of 16 foot patrols (50 military personnel) and 2 mobile patrols using heavy equipment. It was also reported that the police arrested several looters who were stealing office and computer equipment from the premises.

Europe is concerned about the fact that due to an explosion at an ammunition depot near Kharkov, Ukrtransgaz switched gas transportation directions along a transit gas pipeline from Russia, which runs near Balakleya. Its nearest branch, the northern one, coming from the Russian regional center of Valuyki, Belgorod region, is four kilometers away from the exploding warehouses, while the safe zone was at first five kilometers, and was later increased to ten.

The map of the gas transportation system of Ukraine shows that from the north and south, near Balakleya, there are two transit main gas pipelines from Russia - they converge in Shebelinka, 25 kilometers west of Balakleya. On March 21, about 21 million cubic meters of gas were supplied from Russia to Europe via the northern near-Balakleya branch of the gas pipeline, which is more than 10% of the total daily transit.

Another transit gas pipeline from Russia falls within the ten-kilometer security zone - passing five kilometers south of Balakleya through the Pisarevka and Sokhranovka GIS, it carried 67 million cubic meters on the same day, or about a third (!) of the total transit volume.

Today, gas from Russia to Ukraine for transit to Europe flows through four gas pipelines. Three of them pass through the Kharkov region and one through the Sumy region.

The situation is serious. If Gazprom agrees, then Ukrtransgaz will have to change the direction of supply of a fairly large volume of gas. As D. Marunich, co-chairman of the Energy Strategies Fund, emphasized, the main question will be how long the ammunition will explode. If the gas pipeline shutdown lasts more than two or three days, it will create certain risks for the operation of the entire gas transportation system of Ukraine.

What are the causes of the fire that led to the detonation of ammunition?

The chief military prosecutor of Ukraine, A. Matios, of course, stated that the explosion in Balakleya was the result of the work of a sabotage group. He noted that an interrogation of the daily duty personnel showed that before the fire and explosions began, a sound similar to the rumble of a flight... of a drone was heard. True, they say that the residents of Balakleya did not see any drones. But there are drunken Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers from the ammunition depot every day.

Interestingly, the “sabotage” version was announced four hours after the explosion. This is a “beautiful” version, because the Balakleya warehouses are located halfway from Kharkov to Slavyansk, and it is from here that ammunition is supplied to the ATO zone.

The Minister of Defense of Ukraine S. Poltorak linked the fire in Balakleya “with a hybrid war on the part of Russia,” and did not rule out the participation of the LDPR.

Meanwhile, the official representative of the People's Militia of the LPR A. Marochko is convinced that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were simply selling ammunition and, having learned about the arrival of the Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine for Armaments, General Pavlovsky, in order to hide the facts of large-scale shortages, the warehouse management organized sabotage to blow up this warehouse.

As it turned out, the command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not know the exact amount of ammunition or deliberately did not name it.

For the Ukrainian authorities, an explosion of such a scale, especially visualized by the media, is a successful informational occasion for maintaining an anti-Russian tone among the population. Poroshenko even linked the explosions in warehouses near Kharkov with the murder of Mr. Voronenkov in Kyiv, calling both events terrorist attacks by Russia.

Observer A. Zubchenko writes: “Have you noticed that the topic of the arsenal and humanitarian catastrophe has completely disappeared from the Ukrainian information space? Everyone is worried about “Putin’s exemplary terrorist attack in the center of the capital.” For me, everything is logical: an ATO veteran who fought in one of the volunteer battalions, who left with a National Guard certificate (advertising: “60,000 patriots have already joined the ranks of the NG, join”), failed as part of decommunization of a member of the Communist Party of Russia, a former State Duma deputy. What a sophisticated, multi-step operation of the Lubyanka special services!..”

“Unexpected” news: in April, an audit was supposed to take place at the ammunition depot in Balakleya. Observers of the Free Press resource A. Dmitriev and A. Sedova drew attention: on March 21, according to Ukrainian News, “an American inspection group with the participation of representatives of Spain and the Czech Republic arrived in Ukraine and began work at the facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” The purpose of the visit is to monitor Ukraine's compliance with the quantitative restrictions on weapons and military equipment falling under the CFE Treaty.

The inspection was supposed to stay in the country for three days. And further. According to the American publication RealClearDefense, US President Donald Trump intends to conduct an audit and check how funds received from the United States were used in Ukraine under the previous American administration.

N. Savchenko, who arrived in Balakleya, made, as they write in Ukrainian media, an “unexpected statement” that “the explosions at the warehouse are not an accident, someone was clearly trying to hide traces of theft and crimes at a military facility.”

Indeed, everything begins to explode when people appear who want to check where the loans from the IMF and the United States went.

It was not hidden from the public that the explosions in Balakleya were preceded by a drinking party. A resident of Balakleya told a news channel in a commentary: “I know that there was an inspection before the explosions. The generals arrived, drank at the base, and after they left, explosions began to occur. What they did there, no one knows. One thing I can say is that the situation with the explosions indicates negligence.”

It is worth recalling that in October 2015, powerful explosions occurred in the ATO zone in warehouses in Svatovo, Lugansk region, which clearly became the cause of disorder, but then sabotage was also officially announced.

I also remember the burning arsenals in Novobogdanovka and Lozovaya.

“It’s interesting that a similar situation happened in 2008, immediately after Saakashvili’s failed blitzkrieg in South Ossetia,” political scientist S. Uralov wrote on Facebook, recalling the fire in a warehouse in Lozovaya back in the summer of 2008, when restoration work had been going on for about a year . - Military warehouses were also on fire, and also near Kharkov. Then the brother of Ukrainian President Yushchenko, Peter, through whom the armament of the Georgian partners went, was hiding the ends. The governor of the Kharkov region at that time was the current head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Avakov, and his deputy was the nephew of that same Yushchenko. Then, in 2008, the situation was hushed up - but the fate of all participants turned out well. Nobody answered for anything. Now it’s even easier - you can blame the separatists or Russian saboteurs. And in general, arson is the signature style of the regime in Kyiv. I think a lot of interesting things will burn.”

Experts suggest that weapons from the Balakleya warehouse could illegally enter Somalia, Libya, and Latin American states, and the explosions are a way to destroy evidence before inspections, including by European partners.

Kharkov political scientist, director of the Eastern Ukrainian Center for Strategic Initiatives Roman Travin, answering questions from the SP resource, believes the sabotage version is the least likely of all. Just because in Lately there were no such activities in Kharkov or near Kharkov. When they talked about the Kharkov underground before, some incidents actually occurred - bombings of military registration and enlistment offices, attacks on vehicles - for which someone took responsibility. And the policy of the Donbass republics is not related to sabotage activities. The expert does not rule out that the fire in Balakleya was indeed an attempt to hide the supply of ammunition to third countries. In 2008, for that situation, this version seemed more likely. Now this is also possible - judging by some information, arms trade is carried out by Ukraine on a large scale. Unlike 2008, you can cover your tracks quite easily in the ATO zone - ammunition and weapons are supplied there, and it is almost impossible to track their quantity.

R. Travin draws attention to two points. The first is the low level of professional training of people associated with paramilitary structures. The discipline and qualifications of personnel in Ukraine are lame, therefore such incidents are possible; banal human factor and negligence. The personnel problem is generally characteristic of today's Ukraine. “Patriots” came to power, but not professionals. Second important point is that, unlike Russian Federation, where the military sphere is constantly being modernized, in Ukraine its resource has largely been exhausted. It could happen that storage conditions were not met because the warehouses no longer met safety requirements. The ammunition itself could also become unusable and cause an explosion. Depreciation of fixed assets and obsolescence of ammunition could lead to the incident. It is possible that several factors coincided at once.

Residents of the Donetsk republics state with satisfaction that, in any case, the shells that flew into the air in Balakleya are ammunition that was not fired into Gorlovka and Yasinovataya.

That's right. But under the current Kiev regime of collapse and self-liquidation, civilians in the Kharkov region have now suffered. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister regional development, construction and housing and communal services of Ukraine G. Zubko, 243 buildings were damaged to varying degrees in the Balakleya incident, including 117 apartment buildings, 87 private houses, as well as 12 social facilities and 22 infrastructure and industrial facilities.

And another important thing: this fall people will be eating what grows in nearby gardens. But what actually happened was a man-made disaster; we urgently need to decontaminate the land before all the nasty stuff goes into the groundwater with the rains.

Especially for "Century"

According to the Ukrainian authorities, the sabotage and subsequent fire led to a detonation at the largest ammunition depot in Balakleya.
According to current data, between 2 and 3 a.m., a fire broke out in one of the storage areas for 122mm and 152mm artillery shells, which led to a series of powerful explosions.
The fire and explosions continued until the morning. The evacuation of 15,000 people from Balakleya and adjacent villages has begun; some residents are evacuating on their own, traveling to villages outside the affected area, since it will be dangerous to stay in Balakleya for at least several days.

Regarding the causes of the explosion, three versions are equally likely:

1. Sabotage.
2. Violation of safety regulations.
3. Self-arson.

In the first case, if it really was sabotage, then one can only rejoice for the soldiers of the invisible front, who caused significant damage to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in one one-time action in the spirit of blowing up a warehouse in Svatovo.
In the second case, the conditions for storing ammunition on the surface were far from normal and regular explosions and fires in Ukrainian warehouses had been going on since the time of Kuchma.
In the third case, we may be talking about covering up the traces of the illegal arms trade, when using arson to hide a significant shortage associated with the sale of ammunition abroad (for example, to Syria).

Military prosecutor Matios about the explosion in Balakleya.

Of course, it is too early to talk about any specific version. It is also difficult to judge how much damage was caused, but judging by what was burning and exploding since the night, it will be significant.
A special commission was created to investigate the causes of the incident, which included Groysman, representatives of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, etc.

UPD: More than 16,000 civilians were evacuated from the affected area for 10 hours.