Rome, 21 May 2022 – Fire in the main Russian aerospace center. The flames broke out in a transformer substation on the premises of the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute Zhukovsky (TsAGI) in the region of Mosca. The fire was extinguished, no victims are reported. But it is not the first fire that has hit the Russian Federation since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Exactly one month ago, on April 21, the central research institute of the Tver aerospace defense forces was burned down. In the Russian Cape Canaveral, missile launch and defense systems are developed, including the Iskander rockets. But also those of invisibility.
Sources in Moscow at the time spoke of a probable short circuit due to poor maintenance of the wiring systems. It was pointed out that such fires are quite frequent in Russia, hundreds of them every year. And this is due to the structures that are often obsolete. But, at the same time, some newspapers had talked about precious documents that had been lost. In Zhukovsky it is not yet known what the damage was reported. “A transformer substation went up in flames in the 30 square kilometer area at number 1 Zhukovsk Street”, the only news currently available, reported by a Russian source.
The cyberwarfare hypothesis
But I’m not just the one of today elfire of Tver the fires reported in recent weeks in Russia. The rapid sequence has led sources close to the Kremlin not to rule out the possibility of attacks in Kiev attributable to the cyberwar. In late April, flames engulfed Russia’s largest solvent chemical plant in the city of Kineshma400 kilometers from the capital.
On May 1st, a new fire in the plant in Permin Central Urals, where gunpowder is produced for weapons including the Grad and Smerch missile systems. Two days later, a 33,800-square-meter warehouse burned down which, according to the media, is a warehouse of the pro-Kremlin Prosveshchenie publishing house. And again on May 4th the flames broke out in the industrial area of Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, where they went in smokes 2 thousand square meters of a solvent depot. Six fires in one month at strategic structures in Moscow. Just a coincidence?