Thousands forced to flee, airspace closed after munitions warehouse explodes in central Ukraine - UPDATE

RT
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 10:03 UTC

© Reuters

Massive explosions and a blaze at a military ammunition depot in central Ukraine forced authorities to evacuate 24,000 people and close airspace over the region

Over 1,000 rescue workers are battling a massive blaze at a military warehouse in Ukraine's Vinnytsia region, where over 20,000 people have been cleared as the explosions of munitions for multiple rocket launchers continue to threaten the lives of locals.

According to reports, the depot is spread across 60 hectares and holds some 188,000 tons of ammunition including rockets to multiple launch systems, such as the 'Smerch', 'Uragan' and 'Grad'.

Over 1,000 firefighters and dozens of rescue vehicles continue to battle the blaze.

As a precaution, Ukrainian authorities have closed off the airspace within a 50 km radius of the city.

At least two women have been injured in the blaze. They both sought medical help in the local hospital, the deputy head of Vinnytsia Region administration, Andrey Gizhko, said, as cited by 112 Ukraine TV.

"Many houses have been destroyed, there are casualties," a local woman told 112 Ukraine, adding that many livestock have been killed in the incident.

All traffic has been halted in several areas across Vinnytsia Region due to the incident, the Ukrainian emergency services say.

Around 30,000 people were evacuated as of Monday morning, they added.

The fire at a military depot in the town of Kalinovka started shortly before 10:00pm local time, resulting in the detonations, the interior ministry said.

"Today, on September 26, at 21:50, the Kalinovskiy police department of the Vinnytsia region received a report of the detonation of ammunition on the territory of one of the military stations," authorities said in a Facebook post.

© dsns.gov.ua

© dsns.gov.ua

Authorities have ordered police officers from the Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytsky regions to rush to the scene the statement added. Police cordoned off roads leading to Kalinovka and are now clearing residents of the town and surrounding villages as munitions continue to explode.

Comment: These military warehouse explosions seem to be an ongoing trend:

• Ammunition depot explodes in Kiev-occupied Donetsk
• Largest munitions depot in Ukraine up in flames, nearly 20,000 evacuated
• Munitions warehouse explosion completely destroys town of Svatovo, Ukraine while Govt. does nothing
• Fire in ammunition warehouse with 3.5 tons of ammo causes huge blasts in Lugansk region of Ukraine

Ukrainian authorities are calling it sabotage. But, if so, by whom? Some Ukrainians are offering up their speculations, and the culprit ain't Russia!

The fire at the munition arsenal near Vinnytsia could have been organized by the Ukrainian authorities themselves, and not only to hide the theft of the army. This assumption was made in a conversation with a serviceman of the Dnieper Army, a volunteer from Odessa Igor Nemodruk.

"My personal opinion - they undermined the warehouse themselves. And here are two motives. The first is arson in order to hide theft. The second motive of a higher level is the preparation of public opinion for the fact that they need to negotiate with the Donbass.

Poroshenko did not achieve anything with his last trip. And in order to save himself, he needs to make some kind of non-standard move. To unleash a full-scale war is death for him. Leaving the situation like it is now - too, will not lead to anything good, because Saakashvili and the opposition are preparing to overthrow him.

Therefore, it is entirely possible that he is now preparing such a move, which is, say, to negotiate with the republics of Donbass. And here it is convenient to say: see, our warehouses have exploded, there are no shells, let's agree on something quick.

This explosion could also kill two birds with one stone - concealment of theft and preparation of public opinion for the fact that the war needs to end somehow," he summed up.

Savchenko has similar ideas:

The deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, Nadezhda Savchenko, believes that a fire in the ammunition depots near Vinnitsa could been organized to hide Ukraine's links with the weapons trade.

"We are talking about the following, we see a lot of warehouses in Ukraine, which have been blown up. How they are blown apart, an investigation will establish, but these warehouses have been getting emptied for a long time by the arms trade. Now that all these warehouses are exploding, we need to analyze what was in them," she said.

In this context she recalled in this the report of the international human rights organization Amnesty International, which referred to Ukraine's involvement in the illegal supply of arms to Southern Sudan.
"We ought not overlook at the fact that warehouses could be half empty, so they are destroyed," she added.

Update (Sept. 28): The following quote, from Ukraine's secretary of the Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, suggests that the two explanations above may not be too far off the mark:

"The country has suffered the biggest blow to our fighting capacity since the start of the war."

And the chief military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios "ruled out the possibility that the blast had been caused by foreign saboteurs". Looks like they haven't ruled out domestic saboteurs!

Matios said investigators were looking into possible negligence, abuse of power, or sabotage by those who were authorized to handle the ammunition.

So far the investigation has uncovered that the fire alarm wasn't working and security was understaffed. Sounds like Ukraine!