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Ukraine Destroys Months of Russian Ammo Supplies in Large Drone Strike
Analyzing the Toropets Explosion
Last Wednesday started like any other day — I checked my email, read some press releases, scanned the Early Bird, and opened the secure messaging app Signal to see if any sources reached out.
Within minutes of opening Signal, I saw a note from an Air Force colleague who went on to work at DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“Wes, check out this video.”
With no other context, the next message was a six-second video of a massive explosion shot from a mobile device.
Dear God, I thought — looks like a low-yield nuclear explosion.
“Where is this at?” I responded.
“Toropets, Tver Oblast. Russia’s largest arms depot.”
For the next two hours, we socialized the video with members from our former team, comparing the footage to the GBU-43/B explosion, also called the MOAB for ‘Mother of All Bombs’, as well as small nuclear explosions we’ve seen from Cold War tests.
The Toropets blast was so large, it was picked up by NASA satellites and earthquake monitors.
According to Estonian Defense Forces Intelligence Center Head Colonel Ants Kiviselg, the strike caused 30,000 tons of munitions to explode, noting that the size of the explosion equates to 750,000 artillery shells.
The explosion certainly looks like what you would expect 750,000 artillery shells to look like if they all went up at once.
Assuming the Russian average consumption rate of 10,000 shells per day, this would wipe out about two and a half months of ammunition for Russia.
But the ammo depot stored more than just artillery shells.
According to a source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the arsenal also stored ballistic missiles, including Iskanders, anti-aircraft missiles, and KAB-guided bombs.
