The missile that left a crater south of Russian Belgorod came from the territory of the Russian Federation.
This was reported by the Conflict Intelligence Team in Telegram.
As the investigative journalists note, the "Ukrainian missile" that left a crater south of Belgorod actually came from Russian territory. Yesterday, a Belgorod telegraph channel published footage from a video recorder showing the impact of an unknown munition, reportedly in the Nikolskoye area south of Belgorod.
Earlier, Russian media and social networks claimed that a Ukrainian missile had hit there. This happened already after a probable raid by Ukrainian helicopters on objects in the vicinity of Belgorod.
"We managed to geolocate the shooting location at the moment the missile hit. It turned out that the video recorder was filming in the southeastern direction, while the missile was coming from the left, that is, from the east or northeast, which means from Russian territory," the CIT stressed.
"The size of the crater suggests that the munition that left it was a cruise or ballistic missile. According to the ratio of its size to the pillars next to it, it could be the 9M728 Iskander-M missile, but we are not sure of this identification. Anyway, we do not know about the use of cruise missiles by the Ukrainian side in this conflict, and the Ukrainian ballistic missile would have come from the side of Ukrainian positions, i.e. from the west or southwest," the researchers noted.
In addition, "according to Belgorod Governor Gladkov, another similar hit took place at the same time near Yasnye Zori in the Belgorod region. Given that Yasnye Zori is located approximately in the direction of the missile's flight from Nikolskoye, it is possible that this hit refers to the same incident," CIT said.
"We cannot state definitively whether the incident was caused by a malfunction that caused the missile to go off course or by a guidance error. Given the fact that the event was hardly covered by the Russian federal media, a deliberate Russian provocation to launch a missile on Russian territory in order to blame Ukraine seems unlikely to us. Anyway, unlike the attack on the oil depot (and possibly some other facilities), we are ready to rule out Ukraine's involvement in this incident," the researchers added.
As reported, on the evening of March 30, ammunition depots in Belgorod exploded. Russia immediately said that the incident was caused by "human error.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, commenting on the explosions at the depots in Russia, noted that the Russians continued to store and use obsolete ammunition. The fire was caused by violations of operational safety requirements, Ukraine officially stated.
In the morning of April 1, Vyacheslav Gladkov, head of the Belgorod Region, reported that there was a large fire at an oil depot in a town near the border with Ukraine. Two workers were injured as a result of the accident.
On April 1, Russian pro-government media reported that a shell "fired from Ukraine" fell in the Belgorod Region.
