A Ukrainian drone strike “wipes off the face of the Earth” a Russian ammunition depot in Toropets. Russia has likely seized the city of Ukrainsk in the Pokrovsk direction, ISW says. One million are now dead or injured in the Russia-Ukraine War, according to WSJ.
Ukrainian drone strike “wipes off the face of the Earth” Russian ammunition depot in Toropets
A Ukrainian drone attack launched overnight on Wednesday struck a large ammunition depot of the Defense Ministry’s Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU) in Toropets, in Russia’s Tver region. The attack was carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service, along with Ukraine’s intelligence and Special Operations Forces.
Ukrainska Pravda has quoted a source in the Security Service as saying that the warehouse was storing Iskander tactical missiles, Tochka-U missiles, glide bombs and artillery shells.
The drone attack triggered a massive detonation. The facility caught fire in the strike and was burning across an area six kilometers wide. A partial evacuation of the region was ordered.
The source said: “The Security Service of Ukraine and the Defense Forces together continue to methodically reduce the missile potential of the enemy that it uses to destroy Ukrainian cities. We keep working to organize a similar thing happening on other Russian military facilities that fuel the war against Ukraine.”
According to a report from 2018, the Russian defense ministry said it was building an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets that meets the highest standards.
The facility was said to be able to defend weapons from external attacks and fires. The full load of each storage site of the arsenal is up to 240 tons.
According to Defense Express, a Ukrainian military analysis site, the drone attack likely struck the biggest ammunition depot in the European part of Russia. The base no.541690 housing the 107th arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU) was hit.
The shock wave from the strike blew out windows in homes within a five-kilometer radius of the blast. Earthquake monitor Volcanodiscovery believes explosions from the drone attack may have generated seismic activity as a 2.8 magnitude earthquake was reported in the surrounding Tver region.
Defense Express compared the scale of the blast to that caused by detonation of a small nuclear bomb. “Some 30,000 tons of explosives at the 107th arsenal would be a rough equivalent to a 30-kiloton TNT charge. The explosive yield of atomic bombs is measured in kilotons, too,” it said.
The warehouse was important for the resupply of Russian forces in the Kursk region. The strike on the facility will limit their potential, the analysts added.
Defense Express describes the incident as possibly the largest depot strike since the invasion that is going to “make history.”
Russia likely seized the city of Ukrainsk in Pokrovsk direction, ISW says
Russian forces recently advanced near Toretsk and Pokrovsk and southwest of Donetsk City in the Vuhledar direction. They have likely seized the city of Ukrainsk, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a report on September 17.
Russian forces recently advanced east and southeast of Pokrovsk. Geolocated footage published on September 16 and 17 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced in some areas in the Pokrovsk direction, ISW said.
Geolocated footage published on September 17 shows elements of the Russian 144th Motorized Rifle Brigade (51st Combined Arms Army [CAA], formerly 1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps [AC]) raising several flags within Ukrainsk (southeast of Pokrovsk), indicating that Russian forces recently seized the settlement. Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces seized Ukrainsk and advanced in Hrodivka.
A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced 850 meters north of Novohrodivka (southeast of Pokrovsk) and seized the Novohrodivka mine and a nearby waste heap, and another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces seized Zhelanne Pershe (southeast of Pokrovsk and east of Ukrainsk). ISW has not observed confirmation of these claims, however.
One million are now dead or injured in the Russia-Ukraine War, according to WSJ
The number of Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded in the grinding 2½-year war has reached roughly one million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The paragraphs below are quoted from the article.
Determining the exact number of dead and wounded in the conflict has been difficult, with Russia and Ukraine declining to release official estimates or, at times, putting out figures that are widely mistrusted.
A confidential Ukrainian estimate from earlier this year put the number of dead Ukrainian troops at 80,000 and the wounded at 400,000, according to people familiar with the matter.
Western intelligence estimates of Russian casualties vary, with some putting the number of dead as high as nearly 200,000 and wounded at around 400,000.
Russia’s invasions and capture of Ukrainian territory over the past decade have caused Ukraine to lose at least 10 million people under occupation or as refugees, according to government estimates and demographers.
With over six million fleeing Ukraine since the start of the war in February 2022, according to the United Nations, and Russia seizing further land, the total population on Kyiv-controlled territory has now dropped to between 25 million and 27 million, according to previously undisclosed Ukrainian government estimates.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in February that around 31,000 soldiers have so far been killed. Several former political and security officials said that underestimate was largely designed to placate society and help continue the mobilization of much-needed new recruits.
One of the key reasons Zelensky refuses to mobilize the key cohort of men aged between 18 and 25—typically the bulk of any fighting force—is because most of these people haven’t had children yet, according to the former Ukrainian officials. Should the recruits of that age group die or become incapacitated, future demographic prospects would dim further, Ukrainian demographers say.
Ukraine has therefore resisted calls from Western partners to throw more men into the fight and has only implemented partial mobilization. The average age of Ukrainian fighters is now over 43, according to estimates by government and military officials.
The civilian death toll remains unknown.
Russia has lost 635,880 troops since it began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This updated count includes around 1,020 Russian casualties in the past day, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Tuesday, September 17.
