A combination of poor weapons handling and bad storage practices likely led to the blasts that rocked Russia’s 51st GRAU arsenal in late April, the UK Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.
In an intelligence update, the ministry estimated that the explosions likely resulted in the Kremlin’s largest loss of its own munitions due to its own troops’ actions since the full-scale war in Ukraine began.
“It is highly likely that poor weapons handling procedures alongside negligent storage of munitions resulted in this loss,” the ministry wrote.
“This is in keeping with a long-standing trend of regularly evidenced Russian ineptitude with regards the safe and proper handling of its own munitions,” it added.
The ammunition depot, about 50 miles northeast of Moscow and in the Vladimir region, suffered multiple explosions after it caught fire on April 22.
Though it didn’t name the facility, the Kremlin had said on the same day that a fire at a depot in the Vladimir region caused munitions to detonate. The Russian defense ministry’s statement blamed the “violation of safety requirements when working with explosive materials.”
Satellite images previously obtained by Business Insider last month showed that the Russian arsenal sustained serious damage, with large portions of the facility affected.
The UK defense ministry said satellite images showed that more than one square kilometer of the depot had been damaged by the detonations, which suggested “massive losses at a key strategic depot supplying Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Footage circulating on social media of the blast also appeared to show secondary explosions in the civilian areas around the ammo depot, which is one of Russia’s largest.
The UK’s defense ministry cited Ukrainian figures that said the 51st GRAU depot held about 105,000 tons of munitions, including ballistic, air-launched, and air defense missiles.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Kyiv’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said at the time of the blasts that the depot had also stored artillery shells.
The same depot has likely suffered explosive mishaps before. Russian state media reported in June 2022 that four people were killed by the “spontaneous detonation” of a shell while ammo was being loaded and unloaded at a depot in the Vladimir Region.
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