Mysterious Explosions Throughout Russia, Belgorod Ammunition Depot on Fire

The sound of explosions broke the stillness of the night in Russia's Belgorod province, near the border with Ukraine, where Russian media reported an ammunition depot was on fire.

The fire broke out in the early hours of Wednesday in the village of Staraya Nelidovka, some 20 miles from the Ukrainian border, Belgorod's regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram, Russian news agency TASS reported.

"I have just contacted the head of the Golovinsky rural settlement, Denis Zolotukhin. According to preliminary information, an ammunition depot is on fire near the village of Staraya Nelidovka," Gladkov wrote on his channel.

"At approximately 03:35 I woke up from a loud bang that sounded like a blast. As I was writing this post, three more blasts were heard," he said.

The fire at the ammunition depot has been extinguished, TASS reported, without mentioning the possible source of the blast.

"So far, not a single duty service of the city and the region has found the cause of this sound," Gladkov wrote on Telegram.

One of the images of the fire was shared on Twitter by @Osinttechnical, a journalist with the UK Defence Journal, a defense news website.

Gladkov said that there were no reports of damaged buildings or casualties among civilians, but he mentioned that similar blasts could be heard at the same time in the city of Belgorod.

Belgorod, which stands close to the Ukrainian border near the Kharkiv region, is some 205 miles away from Bryansk, the city where an oil depot was reported on fire on Monday, April 25.

The ones in Belgorod were not the only blasts heard in Russian border provinces Tuesday night.

A Voronezh district civil defense and emergency official said that two loud bangs were heard in the Shilovo neighborhood in the southwestern Russian city, according to TASS.

It is unclear what the source of the explosions was and their cause, but TASS reports an Investigative Committee official was on their way to the site of the incident.

The Shilovo neighborhood is strategically positioned near Russia's Baltimor military airfield and is approximately 180 miles away from the Ukrainian border.

Other explosions were reported in the Kursk province, at some 260 miles from Ukraine, by the province's governor Roman Starovoyt, according to Reuters. The blasts were likely the sounds of air defense systems firing, but again the source of the explosion is officially unconfirmed, reports Reuters.

On Monday, Russian news agencies reported that a large fire had broken out at a fuel depot facility in Bryansk in the early hours of the same day. "The Emergency Situations Ministry has confirmed there's a fire," the government's press office was quoted saying by TASS. "There's also a confirmation that it's the fuel tanks."

Newsweek has contacted the Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergencies and Disaster Relief of the Russian Federation for comment.

Update, 04/27/22 3:35 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include more background information on the incidents.