Video Shows Smoke Billowing Into Sky After Strike on Russian Ammo Depot
Source: Newsweek
Dramatic footage has surfaced online appearing to show the destruction of a Russian ammunition depot in contested southern Ukrainian territory as Kyiv's counteroffensive makes gains.
Heavy smoke and orange flames are visible in a clip widely circulating on social media, and also shared by Ukrainian military and regional officials.
A spokesperson for Ukraine's air force said on Sunday that Kyiv's forces had struck a Russian ammunition storage site in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian media. Moscow has said it has annexed Kherson, along with the Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of mainland Ukraine, but this is not internationally recognized.
The explosion reportedly took place in the Kherson village of Rykove, close to the port city of Henichesk, which is under Russian control, according to Ukrainian officials. The ammo storage facility was located at the Partyzany railway station near Rykove, the commander of Ukraine's air force said, according to local media.
Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-ammunition-depot-explosion-kherson-counteroffensive-1807488
Smoking kills
= new reply since forum marked as read
It seems that Ukraine has gotten good at spotting Russian ammo depots (using drones or perhaps ally-supplied satellite image data) & taking them out, probably using HIMARS or Storm Shadow missiles (the missiles used are my best guesstimation).
Every time I watch one of the videos it seems like Russia must store their ammo all together in one spot at each depot. It seems like it's all "packed together" close enough that if just one missile (or artillery round) hits it, it sets off a chain reaction that destroys all of it. Some of the explosions are spectacular, like "nuclear bomb with mushroom cloud" spectacular. They don't seem to spread the ammo out into multiple caches to prevent a chain reaction.
Just my opinion/observation of course. Every time I see huge explosions & a clear chain reaction, they may still have other caches just as big 1/4 mile away or something. However, given Russia's ammo status, with Prigozhin saying publicly that his Wagner troops were running out of ammo & openly criticizing Russia for it, & the calls by Russian troops that have been intercepted where they were begging for ammo because they were almost out, it doesn't seem likely to me that Russia has multiple huge stockpiles just sitting around. Of course Russia hasn't been able to maintain viable supply lines to the occupied areas. Drone videos have shown hundreds of abandoned Russian armored vehicles with no sign of damage, yet never a fuel truck in sight. My theory is that they're running out of fuel, the crews are abandoning them, & that's why we see so many small groups of Russian troops, often just 3-4, in trenches. Thankfully they usually leave the hatches open when they abandon their vehicle so a Ukrainian drone can drop a grenade in the hatch & destroy the vehicle. Not sure how many videos of this my fellow DUers have seen, but when a grenade is dropped inside a tank or self-propelled artillery vehicle that's loaded with ammo... oh boy. It usually burns for a while & then eventually all the ammo inside the vehicle explodes at once. Often you can see the shockwave from the blast travel out across the grass. I've seen videos where the only thing left was a crater in the ground. Of course, the crew was long gone, they abandoned the vehicle, so this is about destroying the equipment & the ammo so it can't be used again. And I keep wondering... why don't they close the hatches when they leave? The only way a grenade dropped by a Ukrainian drone (literally a small quad-copter drone) can destroy a vehicle like that is if the grenade detonates inside the vehicle... yet over & over again they leave hatches open.
... but it's a step in the right direction.
Slava Ukraini!
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