Explosions in the balakley are there any victims. Explosions in Balakliya
"We took a bottle of water and documents with us and quickly left the house," residents of the city report.
Mobile communication in the place is overloaded or absent, stationary - in some places is absent.
From Balakleya there is a huge flow of cars, eyewitnesses report, it is almost impossible to leave.
Residents of houses located near the epicenter of the explosions are waiting for the emergency in bomb shelters.
Later, the head of the Balakleysky district administration of the Kharkov region, Stepan Maselsky, said that.
"Yes, they are exploding. There is an evacuation (of residents - ed.) from the 5-kilometer zone. We are already finishing," he said. At the same time, Maselsky could not say whether there were dead or injured. "We don't understand it yet," he said.
At about 7:00 a.m., they flew to the site of the explosion of art warehouses in the Kharkiv region to provide assistance and identify the causes of the incident.
This is reported by local journalist Vyacheslav Mavrichev, referring to the preliminary findings of the military.
"Preliminarily, there is information from the military that the fire is on fire at several points at the same time," he said.
"The largest projectiles that are stored in the warehouse are 152 mm" (self-propelled guns "Acacia", radius up to 20 km), the journalist added.
Then the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported about such an attempt.
According to the General Staff, the attempt to set the fire was around 03:00. "By skillful actions of the command and personnel of the unit, sabotage was not allowed. The situation is under control, a commission headed by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine went to the scene in order to clarify the causes and circumstances. All the arsenals of the Ukrainian army were transferred to an enhanced security regime" , - said in the message of the General Staff.
"According to preliminary data (now the results of investigative actions) of the investigation and prosecutorial group of the Viysk prosecutors of the Kharkiv garrison and the investigative unit of the SBU in the Khankiv region (which are at the scene), as a result of sabotage tonight at 2 hours. 46 minutes. on several
storage sites for rocket and artillery weapons (tank and artillery shells 125 and 152 mm) near the town of Balakleya in the Kharkiv region, an explosion (a fire broke out), which caused the detonation of ammunition," he wrote in particular.
Anatoly Matios, head of the military prosecutor's office, wrote about this on his Facebook page.
08:42 Due to the sabotage in Balakliya State Border Service: the density of border patrols outside the checkpoints has been increased, security measures at the checkpoints have been strengthened.
At present, the situation on the border sections within the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Lugansk regions is under control. All checkpoints are operating normally.
08:58 On the situation in Balakliya to examine possible damage to residential and civilian facilities.
Fire trains of Ukrzaliznytsia were sent to the Kharkiv region in order to localize and extinguish a fire in military warehouses located near Balakleya.
09:41 Due to the ongoing detonation of ammunition at military depots in Balakliya, ". The gas pipeline closest to the depots is within a radius of 4 km.
09:52 Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said that the fire at the ammunition depots in Balakliya continues. A third of the territory of the arsenal is on fire there. .
09:56 According to official figures, there are no dead in Balakliya, but social networks report that.
10:13 Secretary of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security and Defense Ivan Vinnik noted that at the ammunition depot in Balakliya.
10:28 Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak announced that Ukraine.
10:32 The Ministry of Defense called two versions of the explosion of ammunition depots. .
12:07 In connection with the explosions at the ammunition depot in Balakliya, the President of Ukraine.
12:22 As a result of sabotage at the ammunition depots in Balakliya.
12:37 The head of the SBU of Ukraine Vasily Gritsak said that.
12:44 IN terrorist organizations.
12:48 According to eyewitnesses, in warehouses in Balakliya.
13:58 As a result of explosions near Balakleya.
"Two wounded, they were taken to the hospital. We do not know the age, the severity of the injury. We are clarifying," a police spokesman said.
14:38 About a thousand people went to Balakleya to protect public order.
14:40 The head of the press service of PJSC "Ukrtransgaz" Maxim Belyavsky said that the explosions at the ammunition depot near Balakleya, in the area where the main gas pipelines pass,.
Ukrtransgaz has significant capacities for the transit of Russian gas, so we can easily transfer the transit flow to other branches, and no one will feel it," he said.
17:08 The reason for the explosion of military warehouses in Balakliya, Kharkov region. This was announced by the Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman during an emergency trip to the Kharkiv region.
08:08 As of the morning of March 24, explosions of varying intensity continue to occur on the territory of the military arsenal in Balakleya, Kharkiv region.
Due to an emergency.
10:32 In one of the houses near the burning warehouses in Balakleya According to the Ministry of Health, a woman born in 1962 received a shrapnel wound to the head as a result of a shell hit in the house.
11:05 Dnipro IT specialists processed and.
18:23 State Emergency Service and four nearby villages from explosive ordnance.
18:44 The number of victims of explosions at ammunition depots in the balakley of Kharkiv region
19:36 As a result of explosions at ammunition depots in Balakliya, Kharkiv region,
23:28 Consequences of a fire in the warehouses and its environs. This was announced by the head of the Balakleya district state administration Stepan Maselsky.
17:56 City . Such a promise was made by the head of the Department for the organization of pyrotechnic work of the State Emergency Service Oleg Bondar.
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 radius of danger. According to the military prosecutor's office, a quarter of the stocks in the warehouse have already exploded.
Rescuers and firefighters immediately rushed to the scene. An emergency response headquarters has been deployed on the spot. Also, a commission headed by Deputy Defense Minister Igor Pavlovsky, officers of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff flew to the base.
The evacuation from the city itself and two nearby settlements. About 20,000 people have already been brought out. The movement of passenger transport through the Balakleya railway station has been suspended. Also, the police began to block roads, set up roadblocks. UkSATSE 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 in the city of Balakliya. 250 personnel and 50 pieces of equipment were involved from the State Emergency Service, reserve forces and means, including pyrotechnic crews, were put on alert.
There is no information yet about the dead or injured in the fire.
Cause of the explosions
The military prosecutor's office admits two versions of the cause of the base fire - negligence and sabotage. The latest version takes precedence.
According to the 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 Balakliya, 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 the briefing.
In addition, according to witnesses, a drone was heard flying before the two explosions. According to Matios, the drone could drop improvised 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 version of Russia's 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, employees who were at the scene during the incident also speak about this.
"The characteristics of the actions that took place indicate that a sabotage group was working there. It could not be a short circuit, because it is located on the street, there is no electricity, there cannot be arson of grass," Poltorak summed up.
Now the fire has spread to a third of the area of the base. So far, the fire has not been localized due to constant, and the evacuation radius of the population of Balakliya has been increased to 10 kilometers.
Impact on the combat capability of the army
Since the fire broke out at one of the largest ammunition depots 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 capability of the Ukrainian army, because the Defense Ministry recently received an arsenal of ammunition worth more than UAH 7 billion. In addition, not all weapons of the Ukrainian army are located in the Kharkiv region, they are dispersed in many warehouses in the country.
In the city of Balakliya, Kharkiv region on the night of March 23. A large-scale fire became the cause. Frightened local residents began to leave the city en masse, and the State Emergency Service still cannot cope with the fire. What happened in Balakliya was found out by "Apostrophe".
Evacuation is not for everyone
According to the State Emergency Service, the fire broke out around 3 am. Storage areas for rocket and artillery weapons caught fire: tank and artillery shells of 125 and 152 mm. "The total area of the arsenal is 368 hectares, where about 125,000 tons of ammunition are stored," said Anatoly Matios, chief military prosecutor of Ukraine.
Immediately after the incident, rescuers deployed an operational headquarters and began to evacuate people not only from the city of Balakliya, but also from the adjacent villages - Verbovka and Yakovenkovo. On the morning of March 23, the State Emergency Service reported on the evacuation of 20 thousand people, but local residents told Apostrophe that the rescuers did not have time to help everyone.
“I have relatives there, but they haven’t been evacuated yet. They called 102, they promised to send a group, but the connection was interrupted. and the police are standing in Podsobny, but there is no result," Artur Trinchenko said.
Moreover, some residents were generally left to the mercy of fate. “At 3 o’clock in the morning, together with our children and parents, we quickly jumped out into the cellar. Windows began to crumble, doors were torn off the hinges. It is unlikely that anything whole will remain there when I return,” Yulia Trofimova, a resident of Balakleya, complains to Apostrophe. police at 6 o'clock in the morning I was culturally sent to three cheerful letters, so I had to evacuate on my own. I explained the situation to them, that I have children, and they tell us to climb into the basement. already suffocating. But they couldn’t help me with anything.”
But in the Kharkiv Regional State Administration they cheerfully reported that assistance was being provided. “Residents of the city of Balakleya and nearby villages will be temporarily settled in institutions of education and social protection in the district,” says the head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, Yulia Svetlichnaya. injured."
The city itself is gradually turning into a dead zone: mobile communication does not work or fails, electricity and gas supply is turned off, rail and road communications are suspended, and UkSATSE has closed the sky within a radius of 40 kilometers from the epicenter of the fire. 500 rescuers and 150 pieces of equipment were involved in the elimination of the consequences of the fire, but the State Emergency Service admits that they will be able to work only after the intensity of the explosions decreases.
Versions
There are three main versions of what exactly caused the fire on the territory of military unit A 1352 in Balakliya.
Version number 1: Official sabotage
This version was voiced by Anatoly Matios in the very first hours after the incident. It is followed by Minister of Defense Stepan Poltorak, President Petro Poroshenko and the head of the SBU Vasily Hrytsak, who opened criminal proceedings under the article "sabotage". Moreover, Hrytsak said that explosives were dropped on the territory of the unit. "Witnesses have been identified who saw how funds were dropped from an aircraft into the warehouses of the 65th arsenal, which later initiated explosions and detonation," the head of the SBU said.
But Poltorak added that a sabotage group could also have entered the warehouses. "The characteristics of the actions that took place indicate that a sabotage group was working: there was no short circuit, there was no grass on fire. According to those people who were on duty, a group was working there," the defense minister said.
Experts interviewed by Apostrophe agree with the official version, because the destruction of weapons depots while the country is at war is one of the components of any hostilities. “Of course, this is an attempt to once again destabilize the internal situation in Ukraine,” says Interior Minister Zoryan Shkiryak, an adviser to the interior minister. “This is a diversion against the state of Ukraine. One of the scenarios that Putin is counting on is an attempt to sow panic and anxiety among the civilian population.”
To prevent the new sabotage from repeating at other objects of the Ministry of Defense, security was strengthened at all bases and arsenals of Ukraine where ammunition is stored. But according to former Defense Minister Alexander Kuzmuk, this is not enough. "It is necessary to split into atoms everyone who is in these warehouses. It is not necessary that the saboteurs entered the warehouse at night with a duffel bag containing explosives. They could have been introduced in advance and carefully prepared," Alexander Kuzmuk told Apostrophe.
The general added that the detonation of the warehouse could be a very disturbing signal for Ukraine. "This is a very serious signal that may indicate the intensification of the enemy's actions. First of all, if the enemy is activated, sabotage is carried out to destroy warehouses, bases and command posts in the rear. You need to think about this well," Kuzmuk summed up.
Version number 2: Bathrobe
Despite the fact that the military prosecutor's office preliminarily classifies the fire as sabotage, just in case, Matios also opened a criminal case under Article 425 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine "Careless attitude towards military service or negligence.
At the same time, negligence could be of two types: either careless handling of fire by the military personnel who guarded the warehouses, for example, smoking in prohibited places, or improper security of the facility, which subsequently led to sabotage.
"The version of inaccurate smoking is unlikely. Because there were explosions and arson in several places at once," Lieutenant General Igor Romanenko, ex-deputy chief of the General Staff, told Apostrophe.
But official negligence, "thanks" to which sabotage became possible (if there was such a thing), looks quite plausible. “Well, we already had precedents when an ammunition depot in the ATO zone in Svatovo caught fire in the same way, and the official version then was that this was a sabotage committed with the help of enemy unmanned aerial vehicles,” recalls a military expert, coordinator of the Information resistance" Dmitry Tymchuk. - Sabotage in Svatovo - it was October 2015. Such a long time has passed, respectively, it was necessary to work out new protection algorithms. We are talking about hybrid war. The methodology for training personnel is changing, taking into account the realities that we see in the Donbass. This means that the same should apply to other aspects of the life of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, especially the safety of ammunition at a strategic facility. New security rules must be worked out. And if life does not teach anything, then such incidents will be all the time."
Version number 3: Corrupt
The version that the fire at the warehouses in Balakliya was deliberately inspired by the leadership of the military unit in order to hide the theft of ammunition was actively picked up by the Russian media. The "officials" of the quasi-republics echoed the propagandists, actively dispersing this scenario on separatist resources.
However, neither military experts nor officials are considering this version seriously. “Theft, embezzlement, another form of deliberate seizure of property from this arsenal after the strengthening of security, and this unit of 1 thousand people, is virtually impossible. There are no grounds to say that these are attempts to hide some kind of abuse or loss of property. normal logic. Whoever steals anything, but endangering the lives of more than 35,000 people is the pinnacle..." Anatoly Matios said.
Dmitry Tymchuk agrees with him. “These warehouses were mainly used for artillery and tank ammunition. Organize an underground sale of 152 mm shells? Well, to be honest, I don’t quite understand who will buy them,” the military expert summed up.
Arthur GoreFound an error - highlight and click Ctrl+Enter
Two years ago, they already tried to set fire to the warehouse.
On the night of Thursday, March 23, at 2:45 am in the city of Balakliya, in the Kharkiv region, one of the largest ammunition depots exploded. Information about this appeared first in social networks, and later it was 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 power of the beginning evacuation of residents from the 5-kilometer zone around military depots. In the district house of culture and school, 2 evacuation points were opened. People were evacuated by buses.
It also became known that two years ago they already tried 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.
Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoly Matios said that the fire at the military warehouses in Balakliya, Kharkiv region happened due to sabotage. According to him, this is evidenced by the preliminary results of the investigative actions, which were reported to Matios by the military prosecutor of the Kharkov garrison (who is at the scene of the event).
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Note that there is no information about the dead and injured as a result of the explosion and fire.
According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a fire extinguishing coordination headquarters was deployed on the spot and special equipment and fire units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were involved. Units were also sent to the scene. public service Ukraine from emergencies and over 20 ambulances.