Apartment block in the city of Belgorod, russia, has suffered from an explosion of an unidentified origin. One of the sections of a 10-story building on the southern outskirts of the city collapsed. While the russian rescue teams are still digging out the rubble, the state-controlled media of russia have already announced this is the result of an attack from Ukraine.
However, the facts indicate otherwise. So let's start with analyzing the setting where the incident took place.
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Specifically, the damage was caused to a section of multi-story apartment building No. 55A on Shchorsa Street. The absolute majority of russian media film the building from the angle showing the southwestern part of the house, from the yard. Although, much greater damage was done to the house on the opposite side, from the northeast.
A number of details testify to this, the main factor being the windows. From the yard side of the building, they are intact, even in the apartments that are next to a completely destroyed section. At the same time, on the outside facing the street, where the entrance and the garage are located, the windows are completely blasted away along the entire building.
Therefore, if we consider the possibility of a munition or aerial vehicle crashing into the residence, then it must have hit the northeastern part of the house. In practical terms, it means that it could only come from russian territory.
What exactly caused such destruction is unlikely to become ever known to the public. The weapon crashed into the bottom floors of the building: this detail rules out the possibility that it could have been a ballistic missile. Otherwise, there would be a characteristic crater on the northeastern part, between the garages and the house, but it's not there. Alternatively, had it fallen right on the house from above, there would have been a breach in the roof but it was relatively intact, it only partially collapsed later.
The only other version that can be considered is the repetition of the "Ryazan Sugar": an infamous episode when the russian FSB blew up a residential building in 1999. However, most likely, that is the result of a mistake on the part of the russian armed forces because this is not something new.
Just in Belgorod alone, there were multiple instances of accidental bombings by russian aviation flying by. The first such cases involving faulty anti-aircraft missiles falling on local residential areas were recorded in October 2022. Precisely, on October 13, 2022, the russian Pantsir air defense system attacked an apartment block on Gubkina Street, 42G, which was also located on the southern outskirts of the city.
Possibly, today's episode was the result of an abnormal operation of a surface-to-surface missile. And again, just in Belgorod, this is not unprecedented — as of July 2022, the local residents themselves filmed the same happen on cameras. Another explanation would be an inadvertent drop of an aerial ammunition by russian pilots. For a reminder, on April 20, 2023, a russian Su-34 bombed Belgorod. And in that case as well, the southern district of the city suffered.
That is to say, in recent years, the russian federation has systematically shelled its own city of Belgorod, and the geographic analysis of the site ultimately puts everything in its place.
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