Will the explosions at the Kuzminki test site be repeated again? Kuzminka - another tragedy or concealment of a crime? The explosion scared people.
A terrible explosion at the Rostov training ground: there are no casualties, but the question of the security of military facilities remains open.
The morning of April 28 for residents of several settlements of the Neklinovsky and Myasnikovsky districts of the Rostov region turned out to be unkind. They had to evacuate from their homes to temporary accommodation centers. The reason for the evacuation carried out by the rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations was a strong explosion, which, according to official data, thundered at about 7.45 am in the area of the Kuzminki settlement in the Myasnikovsky district. We reported this yesterday. On the other hand, information spread on social networks that the explosions at the test site began as early as 7.10 - 7.15 am.
Self-propelled installation "blown up" by faulty wiring?
The explosion took place at one of the military training grounds of the Southern Military District. A self-propelled artillery unit (ACS) caught fire and exploded. According to the press service of the Southern Military District, the cause of the emergency was a malfunction of the electrical wiring in the ACS. After the wiring caught fire, the crew promptly left the combat vehicle. The military was lucky - soon the SPG's ammunition detonated and an explosion occurred. The government of the Rostov region reported that after the first explosion at the test site, several more uncontrolled explosions took place. The fire started. To extinguish the fire, not only the personnel of the unit were involved, but also the engineering equipment of the district, two helicopters of the army aviation. The forces and means of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Rostov Region - 26 pieces of equipment and 106 personnel - were put forward to help the units of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
The head of the district press service, Colonel Igor Gorbul, reported ten damaged cars. However, according to the officer, they were already intended for a quick write-off, since they had served their service life. Although initially it was about 30 cars. But official sources do not confirm this.
As for human casualties, nothing is known about the presence of the dead. According to official data, ten people who were injured during the firefighting sought medical help. They received burns of varying severity and contusion.
The names of some of the victims are known. These are contract servicemen: 27-year-old Vitaly Mandrykin and Elshen Usmanov, 26-year-old Grigory Khvandzhiyan. All of them were hospitalized in the district military hospital. Vitaly Mandrykin has a closed head injury, contusion and spinal injury. Elshen Usmanov also received a closed craniocerebral injury and chest contusion, and Grigory Khvanjiyan received a closed craniocerebral injury, chest contusion and contusion. The names of the rest of the victims and their exact number have not yet been announced.
Khutoryan was evacuated in emergency mode
An emergency regime was introduced on the territory of the Neklinovsky district. To prevent possible human casualties, it was decided to urgently evacuate the population of nearby settlements. About 800 people were taken from the farmsteads Priyut, Golovinka and Chkalov to temporary accommodation centers. Only from the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Rostov region were allocated 15 buses, on which citizens were taken to four points of temporary accommodation.
On the Rostov-Taganrog highway, car traffic was restricted. Utilities also cut off gas supply to ten settlements, de-energized substation 35/10 "Sovetka". This substation supplies electricity to the affected landfill and 15 nearby settlements. Since the settlements were evacuated, employees of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Rostov Region arrived on their territory to protect the homes and personal property of citizens from possible acts of looting.
Among the civilian population, according to Vice Governor Vadim Artyomov, there are no wounded or shell-shocked. The buildings of the evacuated farms were not damaged either - both residential and economic buildings remained intact. True, according to our information, some dwelling houses in the farmsteads of Vodino and Golovinka were nevertheless damaged. In Vodino, a shell flew into the territory of a private household. In Golovinka, glass flew out in the windows of a residential building.
By the afternoon, the state of emergency declared in the Neklinovsky district in the morning was lifted. However, in order to avoid unforeseen circumstances, the authorities asked citizens not to let their children out on the street. It is also recommended to be careful about metal objects that may be unexploded ordnance. Therefore, residents of farms adjacent to the landfill should carefully monitor their children, preferably accompany them while moving around the settlements.
The explosion scared people
The explosion at the test site naturally became the number one news item in the regional media. Rostov residents living in the Northern Residential Massive, claim that they felt the "echo" of the explosion: "I was still in bed, shook in the horizontal plane twice at this time between 7.10-7.15, was very frightened, thought somewhere there was an earthquake" - writes a visitor to one from regional information resources. It goes without saying that in the settlements of the Myasnikovsky and Neklinovsky districts, the “sway” was much stronger. Many residents of the region were worried about the possible consequences of such emergencies, recalled the repeated cases of man-made accidents at military facilities that occurred in the 1990s - 2000s in various regions of Russia.
The current explosion is far from the first emergency
Since then, as the training ground in Kuzminki began to be used more actively by the army units of the district, emergencies also began to occur much more often. In July 2014, a mortar mine exploded during a practice shooting. As a result of the emergency, a thirty-year-old contract serviceman was killed, and seven more servicemen were injured of varying severity. In August, according to Gazeta.ru, nine people died at the training ground - all of them were servicemen of one of the motorized rifle brigades of the Russian army, one of the victims was an officer with the rank of lieutenant. And now - a new emergency, about the real causes and possible culprits of which it is too early to speak.
The relatively "soft" consequences of an explosion at the Kuzminki training ground, involving hundreds of people, equipment, and even helicopters extinguished fires, should not be an excuse for those responsible for the safety of military facilities, for safety measures and the operation of weapons. After all, any such incident creates a mortal threat to a large number of both military personnel and civilians, fraught with significant material damage to the state and private property. While the reasons for what happened at the landfill are being investigated by the competent authorities, and Svobodnaya Pressa, in turn, will inform readers about further details of the investigation into the emergency. So far there are more questions than answers. Was there a fire at the ammunition depot, information about which immediately appeared on many sources and why people in uniform are silent about it? Why have many settlements been urgently cut off from electricity? What was it in general, and most importantly, will it not happen again in the near future?
A snapshot at the opening of the article: during the extinguishing of a fire at the Kuzminsky military range, which arose as a result of the explosion of an ammunition load of a self-propelled artillery unit / Photo: Valery Matytsin / TASS
The headquarters of the Southern Military District told Gazeta.Ru that a 152-mm self-propelled howitzer MSTA 2S19 exploded.
Fortunately, this time there were no casualties. According to the head physician of the Central Regional Hospital of the Neklinovsky District Dmitry Kuznetsov, six servicemen were injured, mostly burns.
“But there are no seriously ill patients among the wounded,” says Kuznetsov.
Residents of nearby villages were urgently evacuated from the area of the landfill. 120 people were taken out of the Golovinka farm, where glass in several houses was broken by fragments. 360 residents left the Chkalovsky settlement. All of them were placed in local schools. One of the shells flew into the Vodino farm - it landed in a private house, now explosives technicians are working on the spot.
Kuzminka is a military training ground, civilians were never allowed there. What they do there and what tasks they solve, we do not know and do not ask. I can only inform you that none of the local residents were injured, - Alexander Khovyakov, 1st Deputy Head of the Neklinovsky District of the Rostov Region, told Gazeta.Ru. “Just in case, we deployed four reception centers for citizens, you never know what a threat or something else, but they, fortunately, were not needed.”
According to Khovyakov, all residents have already been released to their homes, the emergency situation in the area has been lifted.
For a long time, there were no large-scale exercises at the site. But in March 2014, about 4 thousand paratroopers, 36 ships of military transport and army aviation landed here. The exercises were practicing the use of tactical and parachute assault forces in various latitudes and conditions.
Three months later, in July, a tragedy struck at Kuzminka. During the shooting practice, a mortar mine exploded. Then a 30-year-old contract soldier was mortally wounded, and seven more servicemen were wounded of varying severity.
A month later, a new state of emergency happened with the victims. According to the members of the HRC Ella Polyakova and Sergey Krivenko,
On August 9 and 11, two incidents occurred at the same training ground, where there were already nine dead soldiers (scouts). All of them served under contract in the 18th Motorized Rifle Brigade.
Six of them were privates, two were senior and junior sergeants and a lieutenant, the group commander.
“The check was carried out, the fact of the deaths of the servicemen was confirmed, but neither the circumstances nor the reasons for their deaths were disclosed to us,” Sergei Krivenko tells Gazeta.Ru. "Even criminal cases were not opened in the end, which is strange, of course."
According to Krivenko, all those killed at the landfill were given the status “died in the line of duty,” according to the law, their relatives were paid up to 5 million rubles. - 2 million insurance and 3 million from the Ministry of Defense.
“It is possible that they died not at the test site, but in another place, and the relatives of the victims (though not all of them) are trying to get a criminal case to be opened and the investigation carried out as expected.
After all, this is very strange: there are explosions and human casualties, but there is no investigation, - Krivenko is amazed..
- The fact that in Kuzminka so often there are emergencies with human casualties raises at least a question. "
“There are too many casualties at the test sites, and the main reason is the violation of safety measures and non-observance of the orders of the Ministry of Defense on work with ammunition,” said military pensioner Sergei Rykalin. - It was put on the view of the military department many times, but people continue to die.
And they will die, because no action on the part of the Ministry of Defense is taking place in terms of changing the situation..
The whole investigation boils down to finding the last one (as a rule, a junior officer), who is then prosecuted. In practice, the majority of emergency situations at military training grounds are due to the inaction of the leadership. "
For example, Roman Ryazantsev, the commander of the combined ammunition destruction company, who was sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony, responded for the death of eight servicemen in August 2012 at the Ashuluk training ground in Astrakhan. In August 2013, there was another explosion and two people were killed. And a few months later they convicted Lieutenant Vyacheslav Panikarovsky, who was given three years in a penal colony.
“The situation with Ryazantsev and Panikarovsky was like a blueprint: the officers carried out the assigned task with the forces that were available, and when the trouble happened, they were made extreme. And the older bosses, as always, have nothing to do with it. At the trial, all the conscripts confirmed that there was no briefing at the training ground and the officers were only following the order of their superiors, ”Aleksandr Filimonov from the Center for Civil-Military Cooperation explains to Gazeta.Ru.
The Ministry of Defense has not yet commented on the incident at the test site in the Rostov region.
On Tuesday, April 28, from the very morning at the Kuzminsky test site, which is located in the Rostov region, a series of powerful explosions thundered.
According to official data, a self-propelled artillery unit, which was loaded with live shells, exploded at the test site. A fire broke out, which spread to the warehouses, where weapons and ammunition were stored, as a result a series of explosions followed. At least thirty cars were destroyed, warehouses were on fire until evening.
Residents of the farmsteads Chkalov, Shelter and Golovinka were evacuated and temporarily placed in the schools of the neighboring village, even just in case they set up a camp in which they could take refuge and receive first aid.
Again, according to official data, as a result of the incident that took place at the training ground, there are no deaths, there are only six injured soldiers, all of them were taken to the nearest hospital in the Neklinovsky district. After receiving first aid, they were sent to Rostov. According to the head physician of the district hospital Dmitry Kuznetsov, the injuries of all six military men are not serious. They were all mostly burned.
Nevertheless, ordinary citizens and eyewitnesses of the emergency have different information about what is happening in the Rostov region. They note that the explosions there were actually powerful. The shock wave was felt even in the regional center. In villages that are not far from the landfill, windows were knocked out in houses. Shells began to "fly in". Residents in panic leave their homes and run away. They also have other information about the military, they say that there are definitely victims there. Supposedly, in panic, the soldiers told them that they had the impression that a war had begun. They allegedly began to evacuate en masse after explosions began in ammunition depots. A state of emergency was even declared in the region. But towards evening he was removed, all civilians were allowed to return home. They say that the threat has passed.
It is known that the Kuzminsky training ground has a bad reputation among the military. It was empty for a long time. But in March last year, four thousand paratroopers landed there and exercises began, which were more or less regularly held throughout the year.
Three months later, after the time when the first exercises began at the training ground, the first tragedy occurred - a mortar mine exploded during the exercises, and a 30-year-old volunteer died. A month later, two more deaths occurred - on August 9 and 11, nine scouts were killed. At the same time, under what circumstances, it is not specified. The relatives were told that they had passed away in the line of duty, they were paid compensation of 5 million rubles each. Nevertheless, no criminal proceedings were opened in any of the cases, which, according to experts, is very strange. There are too many victims, they note, no one observes safety precautions, and it seems that the top leadership of the Ministry of Defense, this fact is not alarming.
