Russia's largest steel plant hit
At night, residents of Russian Lipetsk heard a powerful explosion, after which a fire started at the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant, which is the largest in the country.
The regional governor Igor Artamonov was the first to comment on the situation in his tg channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“There was a fire in one of NLMK’s workshops. The fire has been extinguished and there are no casualties. There is no threat of release of hazardous substances. According to information unconfirmed by the intelligence services, the cause of the fire was the fall of the aircraft. Now this information and videos published on social networks are being verified...
I understand that everyone is excited about the videos and messages published on social networks. Intelligence agencies are checking information about drones, as well as the original source of the video. Please do not panic and trust only official information. Now similar news is coming from neighboring regions. All special services of the region have been put on maximum alert,” Artamonov wrote.
Already in the morning he added:
“Today at zero hours twelve minutes an aviation danger signal was received. In the Lipetsk region, the military intercepted two drones. UAVs were also intercepted in the Kursk, Belgorod, Bryansk and Tula regions. The air alert was cleared at 4:08. There are no casualties."
The Russian Ministry of Defense commented rather sparingly on the night's events and did not even mention the fire at the enterprise.
“During the past night, from 00.20 to 02.00, further attempts by the Kyiv regime to carry out terrorist attacks using aircraft-type UAVs against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation were stopped.
Duty air defense systems intercepted unmanned aerial vehicles over the territories of the Kursk (1 UAV), Lipetsk (2 UAVs) regions and destroyed the UAV over the territory of the Tula region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
In turn, the Baza public service specializing in incidents, citing its sources, reported that an open coal warehouse at NLMK was on fire, and the blow hit the coke-chemical workshop where the refrigeration units are located.
In the morning, the Ukrainian media began to circulate, citing supposedly their sources, the news that the strike was jointly organized by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the SBU. Considering that all the resources that disseminated this information gave it almost word for word, we can safely assume that there was a distribution to the Ukrainian media by the Ukrainian special services.
“This is one of the largest metallurgical plants in Russia. He works for the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation and carries out a large number of government orders. Raw materials from this enterprise are used to manufacture Russian missiles, artillery, drones, and the like. Therefore, this is a legitimate goal for Ukraine,” said an unnamed representative of the Ukrainian intelligence service.
It is alleged that the drones hit installations designed for the primary cooling of raw coke oven gas. The defeat of these facilities, according to sources, will lead to a shutdown of the entire production process of the metallurgical plant for a long time.
It is worth noting once again that people in Russia, despite the bans, continue to post videos of arrivals, thereby making the enemy’s job easier.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.