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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Russian 'shooting range' in Ukraine near Sontseve

The Ukrainian Dnipro-1 drone team managed to make an excellent video of a newly created shooting range aqa defensive positions near Sontseve between Komsomolske and Telmanove and close to the contact line:


Screen shots from the video:





Arial view of the impact zone for artillery and tank shells:



Location of the camp:



It was built in two weeks:



Petrol trucks in protected positions:



Tents for staff:



For cooking:



Chill-out area:



A cannon:



Some more tanks and stuff:



A lot of trenches:


Before and after:



Conclusion:



This is the layout of the area:



Red = area with tents and vehicles.
Orange = shooting range and trenches.
Violet = impact zone

The area is positioned here between Komsomolske and Telmanove:



In Komsomolske there is a much larger real base and also a shooting range in a quarry.

This VK-album shows 156 photos that were taken here. Some of them:











What's worrying is this:
It means (Russian) aircrafts are planned to get involved?

@finrisowlf provides some extra recent satellite images of the area, that can not be found in Google Earth/Maps:





 Conclusion
This is a (Russian built) shooting range with support. It is not an army base. The armor seen there is what is present for training.
But of course, the trenches and the armor can be used for defenses or to launch an offensive across the contact line 10kms further.

Also see: Another nearby hide-out for heavy artillery shooting on Shyrokyne.
Also see: Russian military base and training camp at Komsomolske.
Also see: Russian base/shooting range at Rozdolne by InterpreterMag.

It is nice to see that some Main Stream Media are taking up the news:

Also take note of this photo taken at the same location:



Some of these guys are wearing neo-nazi insignia on their cloths.
Posted by Ukraine@war at No comments:

Friday, June 19, 2015

Why does the Donetsk Chemical Factory constantly have mega explosions?

So far there have been 5 to 6 recorded massive explosions at the Donetsk Chemical Factory so far. (see their archived website here.) And there are claims of even more.

(Thanks to @Sterion who contributed several items to this blog)

 #1 Ammo depot blown up between 30-7 and 3-9-2014
Google Earth shows an ammunition depot being blown up since Sept 3rd 2014:




#2 8-10-2014 Reports about Tochka-U use on Military base 
On October 10th reports came in of Tochka-U use on military unit 3023. See this blog. Yet Google Earth shows this base was already blown up between 24 and 27-7-2014:



At that time not much was reported about it. It's hard do determine a crater on the July image, but the devastation is already there. There is no good satellite image of the area from after 8-10. So at the moment it is hard to tell whether this crater originated in July or in October.
Nevertheless, the crater is there for sure:




#3 18-10-2014 Wagon blown up (with Graham Phillips reporting)
See this blog.



Exact location of this crater:



One might suspect that a wagon full of ammunition was blown up here. But these wagons are unused and already on this position since 12-3-14:



This means either the Terrorussians stuffed the wagon with a bomb or ammunition and blew it up deliberately for some reason. OR the Ukrainians INDEED fired a Tochka-U at this position. But it's in the middle of nowhere, so it must have missed it's target then.



#4 20-10-2014 Yet another depot being blown up

Video of the explosion:



Aftermath:



This crater differs from all the previous ones and therefore must be on ANOTHER location. It COULD be possible that this ammunition depot blew up simultaneously with another explosion and therefore actually happened on another previous date.

 #5 25-12-14 Fireworks storage on fire
#6 8-2-15 Mainly reported by Russian side

One of the videos showing the explosion at night:




Aftermath and crater:



 Again this seems to be different from the others.

#7 17-6-15 Building blown up
Recently another big explosion/plume was recorded.
It was not far from the #5 crater.




Were there even more?
The latest Google Earth image from this area is from Sept 3rd. Most explosions happened after this date.
At https://browse.digitalglobe.com/ it is possible to look for satellite images in a very low quality. But even in this low quality it is possible to see some of the huge damage done at these locations:



The red circles indicate possible new huge explosions/craters compared to the previous satellite image. It is possible that some of the not exactly geolocated craters above, correspond with these positions.

Also there have been less well explored, reported and identified incidents at the factory, like this video, or here:
Or here:



But the May 2015 image also shows two large blast area not determined before (right and upper red circle). The upper one is the position were Graham Phillips got wounded in November 25th 2014:



This position was a well-known sniper position on Pisky. Could it have been completely blown apart now?


All areas are shown in this overview:



Red = known geolocated craters/impacts
Dark orange = suspected crater/impact that may correspond with non-geolocated crater
light orange = other suspected large impacts.


Conclusion
Clearly multiple extreme explosions with corresponding large craters appeared in the areas of the Chemical Factory.
That raises the question: WHAT IS GOING ON THERE?

Some possibilities:
1. Does Ukraine regularly bomb it with Tochka-U?
2. Do the Russian have ammunition depots there and something goes wrong every now and then? Like in this video:



3. Do the Russian blow up stuff just to be able to blame Ukraine using Tochka-U and thus have a reason to inflame the conflict again?
4. Are the Russians building, experiment and testing mega-bombs?
5. A combination of the above?

One thing is clear. The numerous wagons there have not moved since May 30th 2014:



Therefore it seems unlikely that these are used for transporting ammunition. On the other hand these bunkers and the factory are designed and used for producing and storing ammunition. How much (old?) ammunition was still stored in these bunkers? Could simple shelling have caused a chain reaction and blow up depots?

But then: if ammunition depots are blown up, why again and again? Or do the Russians deliberately blow up large stocks of old ammo there? And intimidate Donetsk residents and make a nice blame-Ukraine story of it?

He who knows the answer, may speak out now...

Here are some of the answers:

This last one is really interesting, because it shows photos INSIDE the bunkers with Obama in it when he was still a senator:










Now we can understand why there are mega-explosions over and over again...

A view in one of the underground bunkers:




 UPDATE 1-8-2015
The Times is reporting about Russians building a dirty bomb at the factory:

UPDATE 6-8-2015
SBU reports that they captured four gang-members trying to smuggle nuclear material into Ukraine:
Why would they want to do that...?

UPDATE 7-8-2015
@finriswolf published some recent satellite images of the area that reveal the extent of the explosions:










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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Russian 2S1 Gvozdika battery operating from Krasnoarmiiske to shoot on Shyrokyne

A photo of a 2S1 Gvozdika was published on VK.com with geolocation:
Here is says what location it is:


That location is here:



It is within 7 kms of the contact line. According to Minsk 2 ceasefire agreements these heavy artillery should be retreated 20 kms from the contact line.

This 2S1 is not only hiding there. More photos on that VK-page show there is an entire battery of those and they are shooting too:









One photo shows the battery driving towards their firing position with windmills on the background:



It can be geolocated like this:



It means this must have been the route they took and the firing position must be in the red circle



This position is at 14 kms distance from Shyrokyne:


They are most likely firing at Shyrokyne, since this is the closest and main hot spot in the area, known to be targeted with 122mm shells.


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