Another Weapons Depot Hit
Overnight, Ukraine hit another weapons storage depot. I first want to highlight this post from Anton Gerashenko on Twitter. Why? That’s one hell of a red line that just vanished. If that facility stores nuclear misfiles, it is a signal to the Kremlin. Ukraine is willing to hit any storage facility. I guess now we know why Russia wants to test an actual nuclear weapon. Every time they threaten, it becomes less and less credible.
This is why it is becoming increasingly hard to ignore: There are no red lines, and Russia is losing its ability to frighten people. This is especially the case in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. What exactly is Ukraine using for these hits? It could be locally produced missiles or drones. It does not matter. Russia is losing quite a bit of capacity to supply its troops. This is particularly important insofar as Kursk is concerned. This is per Ivan Gerashenko on Tiwtter.
Russian Telegram channels report that today, drones attacked a secret missile base of the Russian Army in Russia’s Tver region near the village of Oktyabrsky near Toropets, where an ammunition depot was recently hit.
Channels claim that missiles with nuclear warheads are on alert at this base. In particular, the Satana missiles.
▪️ What is known about the Satana missile?
Satana is a medium and intercontinental range ballistic missile that was developed in the USSR in the 1970s. At that time, Satana became the most powerful ballistic missile and was designed to deliver nuclear warheads over long distances.The Satana missile is about 34 meters long and weighs more than 200 tons. It is capable of carrying up to 10 nuclear warheads over 11,000 kilometers. Satana was officially commissioned in 1988, and still remains a part of Russia’s military arsenal.
It has not been officially confirmed that there are nuclear missiles at this base. Nor have the Russian authorities announced any strikes against it.
At the same time, the Russian authorities announced a temporary suspension of all traffic on the M-9 Baltia highway in Tver region. According to the press service of FKU Uprdor Rossiya, this was done for security reasons — the region was attacked by drones overnight, resulting in the evacuation of passengers and employees of the Staraya Toropa railway station (near Oktyabrsky).
Now, to the geography. It turns out this was close to the other storage facility. Given how toxic these plumes are, I feel sorry for the people of Tver. They just had many towns become toxic superfund sites. And no significant decontamination is going to happen.
So here, more on that geography:
The 23rd military arsenal in the settlement of Oktyabrske is located only 16 km south of the warehouse of the 107th arsenal in Toropka (Toropets,) which was destroyed a few days ago 👻
All the details
Map: Yuriy Mysyagin
So they were fairly close to each other. And Ukraine was able to take both of these out. Now, this is per Estonian intel:
About 750,000 shells exploded at an ammunition depot in the Tver region , — Estonian intelligence
The 23rd GRAU arsenal is on fire in the Tver region of the Russian Federation
It is located only 16 km from the 107th arsenal near the city of Toropets, which was already destroyed a few days ago.
That tells me what I said the other day. The Russian army is about to develop a smidgen of a logistics issue. How fast are we going to see them run out of shells? How fast will Russia take to reestablish these bases? Or will they decide it’s best to pull these depots further to the rear?
If things were hard, winter was coming. Winter is always more challenging, even in the best of times. Also, distributing all this to smaller bases makes logistics harder. When the HIMARS rockets started hitting bases inside occupied Ukraine, Russia was forced to do this. It’s the same process at a much larger scale.
This is going to create problems. We have heard of charges across no man’s land with troops who have no weapons. They have been chiefly not confirmed yet. However, Russia did this during the Second World War, where one man carried the rifle, and the other man the ammo. Once one fell, the other picked either. The choices that are left for Russia are becoming harder every day.
Incidentally, there are four more of these facilities in range of what we believe Ukraine has. So, will Russia start emptying them? Will Russia disperse them? Or will Russia wait for the next drone to fall? In some ways, this could determine the short-term future of the war. It may change the course of the war more in favor of Ukraine, which has already done much to do that. The Kursk operation will not end with Ukraine being driven out by the end of the month, or for that matter, in the middle of October. The ammo needed to do that might have gone sky-high.