A spate of fires and explosions at strategic sites and facilities inside Russia has brought renewed claims that the Kremlin is increasingly beset by sabotage attacks, with one senior expert suggesting that internal dissent may be behind a recent wave of destruction.
Ukraine is widely believed to be behind blazes in the early hours of Monday at two oil depots in Bryansk, a Russian town some 100 miles north-east of the Ukrainian border which serves as a logistics base for Moscow’s invasion force.
Security camera footage of one of the sites appeared to show a missile track moments before an explosion which one social media site with links to the Russian security services said had been caused in an attack by Ukrainian drones.
Kyiv has declined to comment on the incident, which follows a similar attack by helicopters on a fuel depot in the Russian town of Belgorod this month. A UK defence minister yesterday raised the prospect of further sabotage attacks, saying it would be acceptable for Ukraine to use weapons supplied by Britain and other Western countries to attack Russian supply lines.
More on Russia-Ukraine war
Armed forces minister James Heappey said strikes into enemy territory on military targets to disrupt logistics were “entirely legitimate”, adding that it was “not necessarily a problem” if UK-made weaponry was used in such attacks.
He told Times Radio: “There are lots of countries around the world that operate kit that they have imported from other countries. When those bits of kit are used we tend not to blame [the country] that manufactured it, you blame the country that fired it.”
The apparent behind enemy lines operation in Bryansk is part of a growing pattern of damage to important facilities inside Russia, from railway signalling boxes to a missile research laboratory. The fact that many of them are far out of the reach of any Ukrainian weaponry has left Western analysts scratching their heads over the likelihood of an unfolding sabotage campaign aimed at hobbling Moscow’s offensive.
Last Thursday, at least 17 people were killed when a major fire broke out at the Central Research Institute of the Russian Air and Space Forces, a defence ministry facility in the city of Tver, north west of Moscow, whose work includes the development of the Iskander missiles used against Ukraine.
Witnesses described how several employees had to jump from upper floors to escape the flames while others perished.
On the same day, the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant, one of the largest in Russia, was severely damaged by a blaze in the city of Kineshma, some 250 miles to the east of Moscow. Large fires have also been reported in the last week at an industrial complex housing Russian rocket manufacturers in Korolyov, near Moscow, and at a Russian air force base in the far east city of Ussuriysk.
With its dilapidated infrastructure and record for maintenance funds being siphoned off amid widespread corruption, Russia is known for its high frequency of destructive fires. The authorities in Tver this weekend claimed the deadly blaze had been caused by decrepit wiring.
But one expert said it could not be ruled out that discontent within Russia at Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has provoked some within the country to take direct action.
Pavel Luzin, a leading commentator of Russian politics and defence policy who has previously worked at leading Moscow think-tanks, told i that only the attack on Belgorod could be credibly linked to the Ukrainian military. He said: “The other cases may not be Ukraine-linked cases of sabotage but the personal activity of Russian citizens who somehow feel bad and are very concerned about the war.”
Confirming the cause of the damage to strategic sites in Russia is further complicated by the risk that the Kremlin is staging so-called “false flag” attacks on its own assets to justify reprisals against Ukrainian targets or stoke paranoia about Western support for anti-Russian organisations.
There is nonetheless a basis for believing that some ordinary Russians are making gestures of defiance.
Independent Russian media outlets have reported fire bombings on five military recruitment centres since the Ukraine invasion began, with one group of young men arrested for one of the arson attacks saying the incident was a protest against the war and an attempt to disrupt conscription.
The conflict has also seen concrete examples of clandestine activity designed to wreak havoc on Russia’s military logistics. Ukraine has publicly thanked railway workers, IT specialists and dissident officials in Belarus who carried out sabotage on the country’s rail network, including signalling systems, to slow the flow of supplies designed to support the Kremlin’s assault on Kyiv.
More from News
Human rights groups have said that at least a dozen Belarusians are in custody for their role in attacks launched in the first days of the war, which are credited with contributing to the infamous 40-mile traffic jam of Russian trucks and armour seen trying to travel from Belarus to the Ukrainian capital.
In recent days, images have appeared on social media purporting to show damage to trackside signalling boxes on Russian railway lines leading towards eastern Ukraine. Activists involved in the railway campaign in Belarus have claimed involvement in renewed attacks in Russia, but these have not been verified.
