Russia on fire - The great mystery of the series of fires on national territory
Created: 05/11/2022, 08:56
By: Aleksandra Fedorska
The photo, by an anonymous source and provided by AP, shows two fires that broke out in an oil storage facility at the Transneft-Druzhba depot.
A serious fire broke out in two Russian oil depots near the border with Ukraine during the night.
© Uncredited/dpa
Serious fires break out in Russia during the Ukraine war.
Some see Ukraine as responsible.
However, some events remain unclear.
Russia – On May 8, Perm burned again.
The city, which is around 1,500 kilometers east of Moscow, has been hit by severe fires several times in recent weeks.
These dangerous events have been happening across Russia since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ammunition depots and weapons factories are mostly affected.
Perm is an important center of the Russian defense industry.
Among other things, rockets and carriers for cruise missiles are produced there.
In the past few days, the industrial plants in Dzerzhinsk in the Nizhny Novgorod region have also been on fire as the Ukraine conflict has escalated.
At the end of April, fires broke out at a chemical plant in Kineszma in the Ivano-Frankivsk region and at an oil storage facility in Bryansk near the border with Ukraine.
Just like the research institute in Tver, which was set on fire.
The Russian media hardly reports on the massive fire series.
It is only local media that take on these issues.
This also seems inevitable when clouds of smoke are circling over the cities for days, as in Perm.
Russia in the Ukraine war: Russian territory affected by numerous fires
Even the NASA satellites in space can see the consequences of the many fires that affect industrial plants, infrastructure and forests.
The forest fires alone are recorded in 77 of the 85 regions of Russia.
A special state of emergency has been declared in 46 of them, banning access to the forests for ordinary citizens.
The situation in the remote Krasnoyarsk region is particularly critical.
In Omsk, the governor Alexander Burkov declared a general state of emergency.
While in many cases arson attacks on armament facilities are the cause, the forest fires are a consequence of the climate crisis.
In the past seven years, a three-fold increase in forest fires has been recorded in Russia compared to the previous ten years.
Scientists studying the climate crisis in Russia are already talking about a new era for humanity - an era of fire.
The engagement of Russian troops in Ukraine prevents the use of military forces, including the air force, as is usual in such cases, to put out the huge fires.
In this context, the Ukrainian media add that they have information that ordinary firefighters were often absent because they would also take part in the Ukraine war.
It is feared that it could get worse in Russia in the summer.
Experience has shown that forest fires increase sharply again during this time.
Russia in the Ukraine war: who sets the fire?
Expert points to Ukrainian attacks on military targets
The Polish Russia expert Michał Kacewicz analyzed the possible actors responsible for the series of fires in Russia for the TV channel Belsat.
“The Ukrainians attacked Russia on the second day of the war.
On February 25, the Russian airport Millerow in the Rostov region was probably hit by Toczka-U 25 missiles” writes Kacewicz.
Ukrainian attacks on military targets in Russia have continued and even intensified since the beginning of the war.
However, this only explains the fires in relative proximity to the Ukrainian border.
Since fires have already affected several dozen such objects in Russia, the search for the causes is more difficult.
The advisory circles of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj said that more and more commissions designed to examine conscripts were being set on fire.
However, Kacewicz views this information with skepticism.
Although it cannot be ruled out, it is improbable that a resistance movement would have formed in Russia itself.
Instead, the Russia expert sees the causes of many of these events in internal Russian problems that have remained unresolved for many years.
Above all, it is the massive corruption that has long since reached the armaments industry, as well as all other areas of life in Russia.
The poor performance of the Russian army at the front is clearly linked to corruption.
Series of fires in Russia during the Ukraine war: Expert points to corruption
“In 2018, the state-owned Perm Defense Works signed a contract with private companies to modernize the production line.
As in many cases of this type, the modernization was only on paper and a few people made money from it,” explains Kacewicz.
This is a popular method to siphon off state funds from the defense industry.
“Someone on the board of a state-owned company accepts bribes in order for a certain company to win the modernization tender.
The commissioner does nothing or pretends to fulfill the order by bringing inferior equipment to the factory and can charge excessive amounts for it,” the Polish Russia expert continues.
The series of fires is therefore very convenient for many of those responsible.
In this way, they could quickly and permanently make evidence disappear.
In a burned-down factory, nobody will be able to see how inefficient and technically outdated the work was - while millions of rubles were transferred from Moscow for modernization.
(Aleksandra Fedorska)
