According to preliminary estimates, some 32,000 tonnes of artillery shells worth $800 million have been destroyed in chain explosions and fire at Ukraine’s major munitions depot deep in the country’s rear, outside the village of Kalynivka in Vinnytsia region.
The latest incident was the fourth one in a series of similar ones across the country, TSN Tyzhden weekly news digest reported.
The Arsenal in Kalynivka is one of the many depots that the Soviet army left behind when, in the late 1980s, troops withdrew rapidly from Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. The huge army’s ammunition was stocked in temporary depots, often in locations not designed to become storage for explosives. Unofficial sources claim that nearly 150 storage sites were spread across 600 hectares of forest area. Some 200,000 tonnes of shells, mines and rockets were stored there.
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All these millions of artillery shells were guarded only by 63 people, of which some are pensioners.
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